Familiar Taste Of Poison
by Broken Wing of a Broken Spirit
Summary: Rose has finally found Dimitri and has the man who can change him back to her Dhampir God. But will Tatiana really let Rose be happy? Or will they have to leave the Moroi and Guardian world forever? M for later chapters. Rose x Dimitri.
1. Chapter 1

**Okay, so here's the deal. I don't own anything. If I did, Dimitri would not be with Rose, he would be with me. XD**

**I drop you into the story much the way that Richelle Mead drops you into Vampire Academy, so bear with me. Here's the deal. Dimitri was still turned, Rose did get captured by him, Abe was able to pool his resources and find Robert Doru without using Victor and I think Rober Doru was a wimp in SB so I changed him. He agreed to accompany Rose to changing Dimitri back, but I have a vision for Dimitri and this vision includes him being Shadow-Kissed so I changed that rule too. Let's see... I also am hooking Abe and Janine up. That doesn't really matter too much though...And that's about all I feel like telling you right now. ^.~**

**I've got the first five chapters written up for this and I'll update... I dunno probably biweekly unless my writing muse decides to kick it into gear. I'll post a chapter every time I finish a chapter so once five is finished I'll post two and start writing six. Just don't want to catch up with myself and if my muse takes off, I'll still have stuff to post. I have a vision for this story but I'm not sure how I'm getting there yet so bear with me. There will be fluff and filler chapters.**

**Anyway! On with the story! This from Broken Wing of a Broken Spirit!**

**Rose's Point of View : Chapter One.**

I never thought that I would end up here. I stood across from the man that I had once loved with my stake gripped tight into my hand. This was perfect. Almost. Lissa was behind me, and I could feel through our bond that she was scared out of her mind.

"Now that wasn't very guardian-like, Roza." Dimitri said, glancing back at Lissa with those terrifying red eyes. I moved into his view.

"Let me help you, Dimitri." I said, wanting him to understand how much I loved him.

"The only way you could have helped me, Roza, was joining me. You made it quite clear that isn't what you want."

And he was right. I didn't want that. Strigoi were compassionless creatures. They didn't have the ability to love, to be kind, to be respectful. The Strigoi would kill each other off as soon as they'd kill a Moroi or really anything with blood in its veins. I didn't want to be that kind of creature. For years they'd been hunting Lissa. I was never going to join that hunt against her.

"Dimitri, we can still be together. I've found a way. Just let me help you. Please." I was begging, something I never thought I would do. That was how much I loved the man before me. "We don't have a lot of time. My mom and father will probably be here soon and _they_ _will_ kill you." I didn't know how far behind us they were, but I knew that my family was trying to find Lissa and I and we were just barely escaping them with each new town in Russia we went. Fighting on Dimitri's homeland was not a great idea. He knew it so well and Lissa and I, well, we were just lost ants.

"You never were a good liar, Roza." Dimitri said to me, taking a step forward. The nausea that coursed through me caused me to tighten my grip on the stake, but I stood my ground. Dimitri thought I was bluffing. Maybe he was forcing me to tell on myself in the past and really didn't know if I was lying or not. Or maybe he was cocky.

"Good thing I'm not lying this time." I quipped, motioning Lissa back with my other hand. I didn't sense any Strigoi around but the one standing in front of me. This wasn't my Dimitri. This wasn't the man that I loved. This was a Strigoi, just like the blond one that was after Lissa, just like Isaiah and Elaine. All this Dimitri wanted to do was kill; and I was his preferred target.

I was praying that the spirit user, the one that my father had managed to find, Robert Doru would hop out of the bushes now, but I knew that he would die if he did that just yet. I needed to make sure Dimitri couldn't move. I threw myself at him, interrupting whatever he was going to say, and struck with my stake, ending up hitting his arm instead of his heart like I was aiming. He knocked me away and for a moment, I thought I was going to hit the trees, but I, thankfully, fell short and hopped up to charge him again.

He looked like he was going to do the same thing so I acted like I was going to stake him again, and kicked his leg out from under him instead. He looked momentarily surprised, but it didn't keep him down for long. I saw him starting to recover, not fall like I'd hoped, so I took my hand that wasn't holding the stake and slammed it into his shoulder, successfully driving him into the ground. I took my stake and stabbed it into his shoulder, pushing it through until it was in the ground. Quickly, while he was distracted by the pain, I took out another one that was on my belt, I stabbed it through his other shoulder just as far. He couldn't touch them without causing himself more, unnecessary pain. 'Almost there, Rose' I thought to myself, sliding forward on his chest and holding his arms down.

I moved so my legs were holding down his arms and sent a third stake I'd hidden in my boot into his thigh, repeating this with the stake I hid in my jacket. I'd stolen them all, two from my father's hired hands and one from my mother. 'This is going to work.' I thought excitedly, turning so I was holding him down again. "Robert!" I heard Lissa yell, but I could only see Dimitri's face, contorted with pain and his red eyes glaring up at me. They would be brown soon, if this worked. I saw Dimitri's eyes widen and could hear Robert behind me. His hand, pale and slightly wrinkled, slipped onto Dimitri's chest.

Dimitri glared at me with questions, but I simply held him in place. Robert's aura flared to life, and it must have been huge because Lissa was completely awestruck by it.

Then, before my eyes, I watched Dimitri's shirtless, deathly pale torso change back to the tanned skin he had when he was alive. His eyes flickered between the warm brown I remembered them being and the cold red that they were as a Strigoi. They showed emotions from gratitude to pure anger. I realized, only now, that he would be shadow-kissed and that this man, Robert Doru, would be the Moroi that he would be tied to, just as I was tied to Lissa. This would make it difficult, but he and I had already planned to only see each other on vacations anyway.

When I heard my name from Dimitri this time, it sounded so different, I knew that he was healed, even without the obvious things like his eyes and his skin and his warmth. I kissed him, finally enjoying the tenderness I'd wanted when he captured me three months ago.

"I'm sorry." I whispered to him, then I pulled out the stake in his left shoulder, followed by the stake in his right shoulder, and his cries of pain were killing me. Lissa was already setting to work healing his wounds before I was finished taking out the stakes in his legs. I automatically started to take the darkness from Lissa's aura as it arose. I barely even needed to think about it anymore. I only felt bad for Dimitri because he would be cursed as I was. Being connected to Lissa wasn't a bad thing, in fact, I thought it was amazing, but taking the darkness from her was hard and from what I heard, it caused my aura to be completely dark.

Once he was healed, I saw the grateful look on his face and he thanked Lissa and Robert, seeming to avoid my eyes. He stared at Robert for a long while and I thought he was trying to figure out the bond, then Robert nodded and I realized he'd asked Robert a question and I'd completely missed it. I stood and had a stake in my hand immediately. It wasn't a Strigoi, I knew that, but I didn't know who, or what, the sound I heard was and so I was ready to strike just in case.

And that was when my mother and father walked through the bushes, holding hands to my surprise, then I realized my mother was dragging him along. They must have seen something. I relaxed my grip on the stake and watched my mother walk toward me. Glancing at the stake in my hand, I laughed inwardly because it was hers. I held it out like a child surrendering candy, and was surprised when, instead of taking the stake, my mother slapped me. Abe immediately grabbed her hand and Dimitri was in front of me in a flash.

"Do you even know how worried I was about you, Rosemarie?" My mother yelled and caught me even more off guard than the slap had. She had never, in all of the time that I had seen her, showed this much emotion.

"I'm sorry mom. I had to." Dimitri's tall form reached around to pull me in front of him, but his protective arms never left my shoulders. I noticed Abe had my mom trapped too, though a little less gracefully. His arms were laced under hers and his fingers were interlocked behind her neck. I had no doubt my mom would be able to get out of this in no time, but I didn't think she really wanted to. "I found Robert and I did what I felt like I had to. And hey, now we've got two Strigoi detectors!" I said, trying to get her to calm down a little. I held out her stake again and Abe released her. She walked forward and took it from my hand, placing it on her belt and ripping me out of Dimitri's arms into what I could only assume was a hug.

Then she glared at Dimitri, though I figured her hatred of him wouldn't last long. For some reason, my thoughts flashed to Adrian and I wondered if he would move on to find someone else. Then, I had a great idea. "Dimitri." I said softly, turning to look at him and away from my mother. "We should go to your house. In Baia. Your grandmother knows that I'm on this quest, but I don't think she'll tell your family that you're alive again. It just doesn't strike me as something she'd do. She'll expect us to come there and surprise them." Dimitri laughed at my assessment of his scary grandmother, Yeva, and nodded.

I turned to Abe and, surprising myself again, I walked over to him and hugged him tightly. "Thank you. I wouldn't be here without you." I told him and, after a moment, I felt his arms wrap around me too.

"Don't mention it, Rose. I only want you to be safe, and this was the way to keep you safe from both him," I saw Abe glare at Dimitri too. Jesus, these people. "and from yourself." He finished, looking at me with serious eyes.

"Take us to Baia?" I asked, motioning to the entire group around us. With a laugh, Abe agreed and I couldn't help but laugh too. Everyone else was out of the joke. Baia was the same town that my father had blackmailed me out of three and a half months or so ago and now he was going to take me back into the city limits himself.

Of course, I wasn't giving him enough credit. He also took me to Baia because I kept saying Belikov, Dimitri's last name. Then, as if my father sensed the positive thoughts about him, he turned to Dimitri and said, "I'll be keeping my eye on you Guardian Belikova." I groaned, walking over to Lissa and taking her into a tight hug.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Mister Mazur." Dimitri said respectfully. I groaned a little louder and buried my head in Lissa's shoulder. I could feel her amusement at the situation trickle through the bond and laughed with her. Dimitri was alive. I could finally believe that my Dimitri was alive again.

"Thank you, Vasilisa." I said, trying to convey how grateful I was to her by using her given name. "I owe you so much." I could feel tears prickling my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.

That is, until Lissa hugged me again and said, "No, Rosemarie." There was a slight giggle from both of us and then she continued. "This is me paying you back for all of the times you helped me." I felt the tears soak into the shoulder of her shirt and felt the laughing sob rack my body. "You're my best friend, Rose. I love you. I'll do anything for you."

"I love you too, Liss." I said back, my voice thick with the emotion I was so outwardly displaying. I got control of myself and turned to Robert, a man that I barely knew. "And thank you, Robert. We wouldn't have been able to do this without you." The man stepped forward and hugged me too and told me he was repaying Lissa and I for his brother.

With my father's ungraceful cough, we all decided to get moving.

After crossing through about three miles of pure forest, we emerged onto the road that I could only assume was some kind of freeway and there was a large, Hummer looking vehicle on the shoulder. I groaned inwardly. My knee-cap-breaking father would drive something as extravagant as a Hummer. Without pausing, like most of my family and friends did, I walked with my father and got into the car. He was used to it and I wasn't surprised by it, therefore, we saw no reason to stop and admire it.

"Dad?" The word felt awkward on my mouth, likely from disuse, but I still felt it was the appropriate name to call him now. "Thank you. Really. For finding Robert for me, for helping Lissa and I find Dimitri, and for being there for mom." I hadn't meant to get so serious on him, so I tossed on at the end, "But I still think you're Zmey," and laughed a little. It was the name that Dimitri's sister had given him while I was staying with his family. Abe laughed with me and told me he understood as my mother's hand hit the door handle and she hopped up next to Abe. Dimitri got in next to me and Lissa sat on my other side with Robert, talking animatedly about Spirit.

I felt Dimitri's hair brush my shoulder as he leaned down to talk to me. "Thank you, Roza. While I still think you would have enjoyed being Strigoi with me, I love you too much to take away all of your light. Thank you for loving me that much as well." His words, strangely, were comforting. I knew that he was my Dimitri again, but the Strigoi senses were still better than a Dhampir's and I knew he would have liked to retain them, if only to protect me.

"You aren't fully free of death, or darkness, or being a Strigoi, are you?" I asked, allowing my fears to take over every other part of my emotions as I leaned into him. "You can feel what Robert's feeling. You feel like you have to protect him, don't you?" I asked him, knowing the answer before I heard him say it.

"Yes, Roza. I am shadow-kissed now. And I still feel the Strigoi emotions, but no. I am not going to go back." Dimitri answered my question before I even had to ask it. Yes. He was definitely the man I fell in love with. I nestled myself between his arm and his chest and closed my eyes, enjoying his closeness. "I love you Roza. I'm sorry that I didn't say it earlier and I'm so sorry for trying to kill you. And all of the threats." He sounded so sincere, although it was fairly laughable that I was about to forgive my ex-boyfriend of sorts for trying to kill me. Better yet, it was my plan to get him alone and get back together with him the right way.

The rest of the car ride, Dimitri and I quietly listened to everyone else's conversations, spending our time in that comfortable silence that we'd shared so often before. I must have fallen asleep somewhere in the three hour car ride because Dimitri was running his hand up and down my arm and whispering my name to wake me up as we entered Baia's city limits.

"Dad!" I said excitedly, feeling the urge to make some big huge plan. I must have scared him because I felt the car drift a little and then move back into the center of the lane.

"Jesus, Rose, what?" He said, though I could see his small smile from my place in the back seat.

"Dad, we have to pretend we don't know where Dimitri is. I want to surprise his family. Will you say that I told you I was coming here and you decided to accompany me to keep me out of trouble? They still don't know that you're my dad." I started my explanation of what I planned to do to surprise the Belikova family. My father smiled and pulled into a parking lot, apparently liking the sound of my plan. I could feel Dimitri smiling, though I didn't know exactly what it was about. It could have been how much energy I woke up with, it could have been the excitement to surprise his family, it could have been my father and I bonding, it could have been anything really.

"Alright, I'm with you so far. I'll have my guardians meet me here. They're at the little town you and Sydney stayed at when I first met you." While Abe made his quick phone call, I turned my attention to everyone else in the car. "Liss, you can probably come with me, if you want to. Robert, mom, Dimitri, I want you guys to wait in the park. I'm pretty sure Karolina doesn't work on Fridays. Wait, it is Friday, right?" I paused, and My mother's nod prompted me to continue before anyone could get a word in. "So you guys get out and follow Dimitri to the park, okay?" Dimitri nodded and immediately got out. He must have known I wasn't going to have it any other way. My father got off the phone and ushered all of the uninvited party out of the car and into the warm sunny day.

"Alright, Abe." I said, crawling over the center console and jumping into the passenger's seat. "Lead the way. We'll just tell the Belikovs that you sent your little bodyguards on an errand." I said, and obediently, Abe drove toward the Belikov house again. "Now, Lissa. This guy sitting next to me, he's a mobster. He does all kinds of illegal stuff all the time. I've affectionately come to call him 'Zmey'. It's snake in Russian. You've gotta act like you don't trust this guy, okay?" I briefed Lissa and listened to my father laugh at my little synopsis of him.

"Got it." Liss said with a confident face. She wanted to laugh, I could tell without using the bond, but it didn't matter. She was a fantastic actress.

We pulled up to the Belikov house and I hopped out of the car, opening Lissa's door for her and waiting for her to get out. I walked with her up to the front door and lifted my hand to knock on the door. Three knocks and a minute or two later, Olena Belikova, Dimitri's mom, answered the door. As soon as she saw who I was, I felt myself wrapped up in her strong, motherly arms. "Hello, Olena." I said lightly, hugging the woman back briefly and leaned back to introduce Lissa to her. Olena wrapped Liss up in a hug, which she was surprised by, but I could feel that Liss felt the same way about Dimitri's mother as I had when I lived here.

"Is everyone home?" I asked Olena lightly, walking in after her with Lissa and Abe on my heels. She walked us straight to the kitchen, of course.

"Karolina should be home in fifteen minutes, why?" Olena answered, taking out a few pans and opening the refrigerator.

While I knew not to argue Olena when she wanted to feed someone, Lissa did not. So naturally, she automatically said, "Oh, Miss Belikov, you don't need to worry about us. We aren't that hungry."

"Nonsense." Olena answered, and her thick Russian accent and her tone of voice said she wasn't going to change her mind. "Roza, you'll eat whatever I make, won't you?" She asked me, putting me in the spotlight. Luckily, I loved Olena.

"You bet!" I answered happily, noting that she was pulling out the ingredients to the little Russian pancake things that I loved so much. What were they called? Blani? Blini? Yes. Blini. That was it. "But Olena, I was wondering if everyone wanted to go on a picnic with Abe, Lissa, and I. We were going to go to that park in the center of town. We really wanted to see you."

Olena smiled widely and was thrilled at the prospect of making a picnic and immediately, I hopped up to help her. Liss tried to help too, but I literally shoved her back into her chair. I'd had a little more practice than her with making food with Olena. It was a hard task to pick up for a couple of tries, then it somehow, miraculously, had gotten easy. And I must not have ever forgotten it because I was still keeping perfect pace with her now.

"How's Viktoria?" I asked quietly, going about assembling some Russian sandwich thing. I remembered the last time we had seen each other; she wasn't too pleased with me because of what I did to stop her from becoming one of the stereotypical Blood Whores. It wasn't exactly the most graceful way to end their relationship, but I mean, the guy hit on me as soon as Viktoria was distracted by her friend. I had to do something.

"She is good. Doing better now that she and Nikolai have started dating." Olena answered, and my heart lifted. The boy was practically obsessed with Viktoria and I was glad that Viktoria had someone who truly cared about her, not her body and blood.

"Yeah, thanks for what you did, Rose." I heard Viktoria's voice coming from the doorframe and immediately dropped what I was doing to run over and embrace the girl.

"I'm so sorry I didn't handle it more gracefully." I said quietly to her, holding her close still. She was returning the hug still when she accepted my apology and thanked me again. I assumed that meant Sonya had told her about the little Moroi-whore. I couldn't recall his name and didn't want to. She'd forgiven me, which was all that mattered.

I saw a very pregnant Sonya standing behind her and carefully embraced the woman as well before going back to help Olena again. "What's all this for?" Viktoria asked, taking a seat next to Abe. Apparently she hadn't seen Lissa yet.

"Lissa, Abe, and I are going to take you all on a picnic in the back in town." I answered, motioning to the pale Moroi who was sitting at the table. It was like Viktoria had been when she and I met.

"Oh my god! You're Vasilisa Dragomir! You're the one that Rose told us so much about! You're even more beautiful than I pictured you!" Viktoria fawned over Lissa and I could feel the poor girl's embarrassment through the bond, but she already liked Viktoria, I could tell. Sonya introduced herself as well to Lissa and they all sat and talked while Olena and I silently finished up with the picnic.

As soon as we finished, I heard the front door open and heard Paul running through, making his way for the kitchen. I sensed him see me and felt him slam into my back. I pretended to be caught off guard and fell to the ground dramatically. "No! No! Please don't stake me Paul!" I cried, laughing as the boy straddled me and held a stick over my heart.

"Okay." Paul answered, laughing too and crawling off of me. "But only because you asked so nicely. Don't go off and tell your other Strigoi friends about it." The boy said seriously, and I saluted him and picked him up, spinning him around in the air.

"You're pretty strong, kid. I'll have to be sure to train you. Your Uncle Dimka would have liked to train you too." I told him, setting him down and ruffling his hair. Karolina stood in the doorway and watched Paul, her son, and I interact with a smile on her face. It was one of those smiles that said "Yeah, you'll be a great mother some day." But I didn't want to believe that so I walked up to her and hugged her, being careful of the baby in her arms.

"Hi Karolina, how have you and little Zoya been?" I asked, smiling down at the baby girl, who was now able to rest comfortably on her mother's hip.

"We've been good, Roza. How about you? How is your quest going?" Karolina asked, and I could feel the room grow quiet.

"I've been fine. Lissa and I are getting ready to finish my quest now. I just couldn't pass by Baia without seeing you all." I answered, and it was technically the truth too. Karolina kissed my forehead, something I thought was very Olena-like, and walked me over to Lissa. I introduced the two and Lissa grew fond of Karolina quickly.

After a few minutes of catching up and Lissa telling her story, we set out to Abe's Hummer, cramming all of us, even Paul and Zoya, into a seat and heading down to the park. I was anxious, I realized, about how the family would react to seeing their son and brother in sunlight. Would they be as excited as I was?

**I like reviews~! But flames are icky. Constructive criticism? Ideas for the story?**

**Broken Wing of a Broken Spirit**


	2. Chapter 2

**Sorry about the delay all. School just started back up and between that and work, I'm barely getting any time to even touch my computer. T.T Nevertheless, here is chapter two~!**

When we got to the center of the park, I threw down the blanket that Yeva had brought along, then threw down another one that Olena had wanted to bring as well. After laying the blankets, I set the food down on the corner and then ran back to Sonya and helped her lower herself to the ground. Man, she was really pregnant. It wouldn't surprise me if she had her baby in the next two weeks or so.

As everyone took their seats on the blankets and enjoyed the sun, I sat next to Yeva and leaned away from the group. "You know." I said, not bothering to clarify. I still had a small grudge against this woman, but only because she intimidated me so much. And she made me carry a backpack filled with bricks to prove I was worthy of the son she must have known would come back from the dead.

"Yes." Yeva said; her accent was even thicker than Olena's but her voice was twice as powerful. I felt my self sighing and looked over at Yeva, who I decided must have never smiled in her life.

"That's a shame. I really wanted to surprise all of you. You didn't tell them, I take it?" I asked, watching Lissa as she interacted with the Belikov family. Out of my peripheral, I saw Yeva shake her head as an answer and nodded. That was all I needed to know.

Out on the other side of the park, coming out from behind a bush and some trees, My mother emerged with Robert at her side. Dimitri hadn't shown himself yet. "Hey mom. Hey Robert." I tossed, watching everyone's heads turn left and right to spot the people who could fit with my comment. "Mom, this is Yeva, Dimitri's grandmother, Olena, Dimitri's mother, and Viktoria, Sonya, and Karolina, Dimitri's sisters. That's Paul out there." I pointed at the miniature of Dimitri running around and pretending to stake invisible Strigoi. "Paul is Dimitri's nephew and the little baby is his niece Zoya. Everyone, this is my mother, Janine Hathaway. And this is Robert Doru." I motioned to each of them respectively and told them to sit while I went to buy a few drinks from the store across the street.

When I entered, I felt Dimitri's presence as he followed me through the store. "You know, you can come and join us any time." I said, walking toward the register to pay. I wasn't good with Russian, but I knew enough to get the right things and give the right amount of money. Nevertheless, Dimitri came up and took all of the items out of my hands, taking them to the register and paying for them there.

"I'll join you all shortly, Roza. For now, I just want to watch my family around you." Dimitri answered, kissing my forehead and wrapping a tender arm around me.

"They already know about us." I said softly, leaning into him. I could feel his questioning look without even looking at him. "At your funeral of sorts, everyone wanted to hear about the Strigoi attack at the school. I told the story and people started treating me like I was your widow. Apparently when I was talking about you, I said a lot of things that gave me away. I'm sorry. Your family approves though, if that makes you feel any better." I rambled, stalling before I had to leave him, even if it would only be for a moment.

"Well, Rose, I'm glad one of our mother's approves." Dimitri said with a nervous laugh and I immediately knew that my mother had threatened him. I shook my head and grew angry but Dimitri kissed me and made me forget for just long enough that he could explain himself. "Your mother just wants to protect you, Rose. I don't mind what she told me at all."

"Oh? And what exactly did she tell you?" I asked, getting ready to go back to the family and wait for Dimitri.

"That if I hurt you she would drive her stake through my heart." Dimitri answered, smiling that smile that made me melt and sending me on my way.

I laughed to myself as I made my way back to them. My mother may not show too much affection to me, but she must really love me if she threatened someone over a foot and a half taller than her.

Handing everyone their drinks, I took a new seat next to Lissa and waited for Dimitri to come when my father sat down next to me.

"You know I'll kill him if he does anything to you, right?" Abe said, and I could help but laugh at the statement.

"You know you sound like one of those Italian mobsters, right?" I retorted, laughing and leaning toward him. He answered my silent request with a small, quick hug.

"You definitely got your jokes from me." Abe said proudly, and for a moment I almost saw Adrian in those eyes. All I replied with was a laugh and I fell into a comfortable silence with my father, watching my best friend and my boyfriend's family chatter mindlessly.

The sun was starting to get to Lissa so I hopped up to get the umbrella that Olena had considerately packed along for Liss and for Sonya. I set it up without a word so it cast a good amount of shade over the blankets and saw Lissa and Sonya immediately duck under its protection.

Finally, the moment came. Everyone else managed to not see him, but maybe that's because they weren't looking for him every five seconds.

"Belikov family." I announced, standing up in the center of the circle so all of their eyes were on me. "I must admit, I've not been completely honest with you today." Six confused faces stared back at me and I continued. "You see, today I told you that I was getting ready to finish my quest. This was true. However, you don't have the same definition of finishing my quest as I do. You think that I'm close to killing Dimitri. In actuality, I have found a cure for being Strigoi thanks to Robert." Dimitri walked up to the family and I gently pushed through them and to him, lacing my arms around his middle. He stared at his family without blinking; allowing them to get a good view of his eyes, as if the fact that he was out in the sun and tan again weren't going to be enough to prove him Dhampir again.

Yeva stood, the first to break the spell of stillness and walked over to Dimitri and I, studying him carefully. She was so much shorter than him; it was hard to believe that she actually hit him. She yelled in Russian at him and I recognized a few of the words as swears that Dimitri had used around me. His grandmother was one frightening woman. I would have cringed away were it not for the fact that so many eyes were watching. I did, however, release Dimitri and step two or three paces away from his insane grandmother. Randomly, among the yelling, Dimitri bent down and held his grandmother close to him, saying a quiet phrase that I could only assume was an apology and it was so full of love, if anyone doubted his Dhampir existence, they couldn't anymore.

"Dimka!" Dimitri's three sisters chorused, Viktoria and Karolina hopping to their feet and running to him. I walked over and helped Sonya stand so she could embrace her brother as well. Olena sat in shock, watching her son with wary eyes. I assumed it must be harder for her than for anyone else here right now. She'd accepted her son as dead three and a half months ago and now here he was before her. It must have been like the dead walking.

After hugging each of his sisters and his nephew and niece, Dimitri stared at his mother and I could almost feel the uneasiness he felt. He walked over to her and held his hand out, waiting for her to accept it and give him a hug. After about fifteen seconds, she gave him her hand and threw her arms around her son, whispering in Russian and crying. I felt like crying too. Dimitri was actually back. This wasn't one of those cruel dreams where I would wake up pissed off. This was completely and totally real.

Finally, Dimitri and his family all sat back down, Olena insisting I sit next to Dimitri, which I had no problem complying with. Dimitri was very at ease, despite the glares my mother and father were sending him alternatively. I saw that they were sitting together and that they were holding hands again. In a strange way, I thought that they belonged together. They were so alike, it was hard to believe they didn't belong together.

I wondered if people looked at Dimitri and me like that as well. Glancing at his family, I would say that was a yes. There wasn't anything in the world more peaceful than this moment. Sitting with Dimitri's family and my own family and all of us getting along without many problems, I was sure that whatever Dimitri and I planned to do from here, we would always know that we were loved.

All of Dimitri's family was questioning him about his experiences before I came to inform them of their son and brother's death. He regaled us all with stories of before he came to the school, about guarding a few different Moroi, even about the night he met Lissa and I.

"You know, for a minute, I would have sworn that Rose was going to try to kill me." Dimitri said, emphasizing the word 'try'.

"Hey, Comrade, I would have put up one hell of a fight and you know it." I argued, pushing his shoulder and entering into telling the story.

"I was watching Rose and Lissa from outside waiting for a good opportunity to sweep in while the humans they were living with were busy. If the one down in the kitchen hadn't stayed up so late, we could have avoided the high speed chase." Dimitri said, looking pointedly at me.

"Creeper." I brooded, though there was a smile on my face. "I remember I looked out the window because I thought I saw something move and saw this huge, six and a half foot shadow staring at us. All I knew was I needed to get Lissa the hell out of there. If our roommate hadn't parked his car so far away, we would have gotten out." I said darkly, though I honestly didn't regret going back to the academy and I could tell that Lissa didn't either. It was hard for us at first, what with Natalie putting dead things in Lissa's stuff.

"She and Lissa came tearing down the road so fast, it almost looked like Lissa was being dragged along by Rose. When she saw me block her path, Rose looked like she was going to take all five of us guardians on." Dimitri added, and I laughed.

"I would have taken you guys on. I just realized a little too late that there weren't any ways to protect Lissa from you creeps." I laughed, emphasizing the word 'creeps'. I had to keep using it just to satisfy my own sense of humor.

"Which is exactly why you would have lost." Dimitri and my mother said in an eerie tone. They sounded exactly the same in their tones, the only difference was my mother was being harsh and my lover was being an instructor. They shared a look and though I knew Lissa missed it, my mother and Dimitri shared a silent laugh with each other.

"Hey, you guys don't give me that I defended Lissa from a pack of pseudo hounds by myself." I complained, and Dimitri patted my head lightly a couple times.

"Yes, yes, good girl. You still would have lost to five highly trained Guardians, though. You still could. You're too rash." Great. Dimitri had gone all 'teacher-student' on me. Sometimes I felt like he did it on purpose.

"Dimitri, you forget, I've killed at least fifteen Strigoi, and brought one of them back from the undead." I said, kind of flaunting my accomplishments to make up for the fact that he'd been completely right.

Dimitri rolled his eyes and got that half smile I loved. He didn't even have to say anything because everyone else was talking about my kills and my mother was just beaming with pride. This was the second time I'd seen her with this much pride. The first was right after my trials when I'd managed to kick complete and total ass.

Dimitri leaned down to my ear and said, "We need to talk later, Roza." Softly, though I didn't really feel like he was using the word 'talk' as a code word. Damn. I would have given anything to jump on this Dimitri. How could I [i]ever[/i] have been convinced that Strigoi Dimitri, the one that I'd spent a week in the house of, the one that I'd given my blood to, the one that had buried me in jewels and lavish clothes, the one who fought me until he bit me, was anything like the warm Dhapmir Dimitri that sat next to me now. They were so different.

Disappointment flooding my tone, much to my chagrin, I said "Yeah, okay."

The rest of the picnic went off without much of a hitch. Abe asked to go on a walk with Dimitri, and when they came back I was surprised to see them laughing with each other. That was something I hadn't expected. Olena insisted we stay at her house, though she wasn't sure how she was going to fit everyone in. Paul volunteered to sleep with his mother and Zoya, giving my mother and father a room, and Viktoria also volunteered to sleep with Sonya, giving her room to Lissa. Dimitri's room still hadn't been touched. He and I were assigned to sleep there. And I mean assigned. My mother wouldn't allow me to sleep with Lissa and I certainly wasn't going to bunk with my mom and dad, and Olena wouldn't hear Dimitri's words of caution.

We walked up to his room side by side, just barely allowing our hands to touch as we swung them in sync with our steps. He opened his door and I immediately glanced around the room, taking the whole thing in. It had a large bed in the center, an old, dark green, dark purple, and white blanket covering the white duvet cover. It looked very Western, I realized with a laugh, walking in and resting on the bed, sitting in the very center of it and patting the area around me, inviting him to sit with me.

"Come on, Dimitri. You said we needed to talk." It wasn't very often that I used his first name and he seemed as caught off guard as I did at my seriousness.

"Roza… I owe you so much." Dimitri said, laying down in the bed next to me and throwing an arm over his eyes to block out the light. I hopped up and turned off the light before I asked him what he meant.

"I remember everything, Rose. Everything about being a Strigoi. I remember the hell I put you through. Drugging you, brainwashing you," I heard him pause, though I instinctively knew that he wasn't finished, "threatening you… attacking you. It's the most horrible thing I will have to live with but I swear to you, I will make it up to you. Thank you so, so much for saving me from that life, Roza. I never want to be there again." Dimitri felt so bad. It was only now, as he lay defenseless on this bed, opening up to me, that I realized the guilt that was racking him.

"Dimitri…" I was at a loss and instead of saying much, I crawled up next to him and snuggled myself up to his chest. "Comrade." I said with a laugh, and I felt him chuckle a little in exasperation as well. Leave it to me to kill a very nice, quiet moment. "I forgive you. I forgave you as soon as I got the first letter. I failed you, but I'm glad that whoever is upstairs kept me from killing you because we wouldn't be here if I had." I managed to salvage some of the seriousness of the conversation, which seemed to also take Dimitri off guard. He moved his arm to his side, wrapping his other one around me, and held me close to him.

These were the moments I'd kill for. The ones where Dimitri and I could act like a normal, human couple, because they were where Dimitri acted like himself. The last time I'd seen him like this was in the cabin back at the Academy right before the Strigoi attack. Instead of saying anything, I felt his grip on me tighten as the seconds passed, and soon I felt like he was going to crush me. "Comrade, what are you thinking? You gotta let this out before you break something." I said with a small, nervous laugh, but Dimitri's mood only seemed to darken as he loosened his hold.

"I don't want to hurt you anymore Rose. I just don't know how to do that." He answered, and I got that strange feeling you get when people are trying to say "goodbye" without saying it.

"You do it by staying with me and not making me want to cry when I look at you because you'll never be with me again." I said, voicing my deepest fear. I was so afraid that once I found him, he'd run off and be with Tasha simply because of how hard it would be for us to be together.

"Roza…" I could hear Dimitri fighting with himself and hated him for it.

"Dimitri, don't you dare say goodbye to me." I said, pulling myself out of his arms and sitting up, staring down at him. "Don't. If you say goodbye to me, it'll hurt ten times as much as the worst you did to me as a Strigoi. I love you, and I know that you love me. This Strigoi thing… Well, it's not really anything you chose, right? Nor was it something that you enjoy now, right?" Dimitri's eyes answered the question for me. "Then it's in the past. Don't say goodbye to me because of what you did as a Strigoi. That's not good enough. Not when I fought so hard to get you back."

I didn't notice that I was crying until Dimitri raised a hand to my cheek, his guardian face was on, but I knew him well enough to see the guilty happiness that swam in his warm brown eyes; eyes that I had missed over the last four months. "I'm not going anywhere, Roza. I promise you that I will never leave you again." His guardian mask faltered and I saw that fierceness in them that I had grown to love so much. Gently, I felt Dimitri tug on my arm and I laid back down where I had been. He started humming some unfamiliar tune and rubbing my back soothingly.

And I lost it.

I felt his grip on me tighten as I cried into his chest. I wasn't even sure why I was crying. I hadn't allowed myself to mourn him since the informal funeral – or maybe it was formal – that Olena had held for Dimitri three months ago. I was mourning his loss, I was rejoicing in his rebirth, I was releasing the worry that I'd never find him, or that if I did find him I wouldn't be able to help him, or worse, if I'd been able to help him and he left me.

I had no idea how long I cried, but I do know that somewhere in the middle of it, Dimitri started murmuring my name into my hair and his voice sounded thick too. I felt him turn onto his side and pull me as close as he could, continuing to murmur my name and say something in his soothing voice. Eventually, I was able to calm myself down; and when I did, I saw that Dimitri's eyes were wet too. Somehow, I never thought Dimitri was able to cry. But then, he was Dhampir too, right? It's not like he was a Strigoi who couldn't feel anything other than anger and hate.

Still, Dimitri had seemed invulnerable and invincible to me throughout this whole ordeal, and now, to see him acting so… not. It confused me but it certainly wasn't unwelcome. "Feel better, Roza?" Dimitri asked, smiling sadly down at me. I nodded, truly feeling better now that I had let that pent up stress out of me and, unfortunately, onto his shirt. He didn't seem to care, though, or even look down on me for my complete loss of control. Perhaps he was used to me not being behind the wheel of my own car. "I'm glad." I heard Dimitri say, and though he sounded genuine, I wondered if he was really glad that I'd gotten it out of my system. I immediately answered that question. Yes. He had to be.

I leaned up and kissed him, adjusting myself so it was easier for me to reach him comfortably. He kissed me back, soft and gentle. It reminded me of the cabin. He had a knack for being tender when I lost control. "Roza, I want you to hear something. Something that I should have told you a thousand times while you were with me as a Strigoi and twice that while I was training with you. Are you listening?" Dimitri sounded so unsure of himself. This really was a new Dimitri to me. One that I'd never had the chance to know but I imagined this was the Dimitri he was with Tasha Ozera. I nodded, watching his eyes carefully and bracing myself for anything.

"I love you, Rosemarie Hathaway." He said gently, and accented it with a small, gentle kiss to my forehead.

"And I you, Dimitri Belikov." I said back to him, kissing his neck where I could reach him. "Come on. We need to get ready for bed." I said gently to him, smiling and walking over to my bag. I pulled out a pair of small shorts and a tank top and walked into a bathroom that was attached to his bedroom, closing the door behind me. I changed as quickly as I could, though when I emerged Dimitri was already shirtless and resting on top of the covers in a pair of loose, long shorts and he was looking at me like I was a goddess.

"Like what you see, Comrade?" I asked with a laugh, walking over to the bed and pulling up the covers, diving under them quickly. Even if Siberia wasn't the frozen wasteland I thought it would be once upon a time, it still wasn't warm. Dimitri chuckled and joined me, holding me and murmuring sweet words in Russian, at least, I hoped they were sweet, until I fell asleep.

**So... There's that... Review? Please?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hope you all liked the last chapter~! I again am sorry for the delay between chapters one and two. I'm going to try to keep it consistant but as of now, I'm only able to write on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so production might slow down a bit. Sorry! But I promise to update as often as I am able! I realize that this all seems a little rushed but honestly... I'm kind of only writing it out of obligation because the story wouldn't flow if we didn't see Rose turn Dimitri back and plus, if she'd gotten to turn him back in Siberia, he'd want to go back to his family. Anyway, this is a bit of a fluff chapter too, but I hope you all enjoy it the same.**

It was way too early when Dimitri was shoving my shoulder to wake me up. Well, I guess shove isn't the right word, it's just how it felt at four in the morning.

"Dimitri, if you value your life you'll let me sleep three more hours before your nonsense." I threatened, shoving my head into the pillow and pulling the covers to my chin. I heard him laugh and wanted to slap him for being so damn awake so early.

"I leave you alone for three months and you're already out of shape." Dimitri said, shaking his head and shifting his stance slightly. I only knew that because I heard his windbreaker pants slip together. He pushed on my shoulder again and I growled, yes, growled at him. "We're going for a run. You can either get dressed in warmer clothes or run in that. Go."

The sad thing was, I knew my teacher wasn't kidding. When Dimitri got into teacher mode, it didn't matter if we'd had sex before, he was all business. So, I hopped out of bed and pulled the blanket around me, not allowing him to see anything as punishment for waking me up this early. I walked over to my bag and pulled out my sweats and sweatshirt and walked into the bathroom successfully keeping all of my body from the neck down concealed. That'd teach him to wake me up this early.

But, as I'd expected, it didn't faze my instructor turned lover turned instructor again and he and I walked out onto the freezing streets of Siberia silently. Dimitri took off in a run and I followed a pace behind him since, ultimately, I had no idea where I was going. He and I didn't say a word to each other as we ran through the dark, quiet streets of Baia, our feet slamming the concrete the only noise we were making, but both of us were on high alert. We realized that since it was still dark, this was the time of the Strigoi and they could come upon us at any time. Both of us had our stakes somewhere on our persons, mine was in my sweat pants' pocket, where I felt it was most accessible.

The sun was just starting to come up, telling me it was about six or so in the morning, when Dimitri finally circled us back to his house, stopping me before I walked in the door. He had his stake out. I felt the grin that consumed my face and I pulled my own silver weapon out of my sweatpants pocket. This was my chance for the sweetest revenge ever.

I cleared out my mind and focused purely on the fight, dodging everything Dimitri threw at me and watching him dodge everything I threw at him. We knew each other too well, and he'd taught me a lot of what I knew about fighting. It was a pretty even fight. That is, until I surprised him by sliding between his legs and hopping onto his back, driving my stake "into his heart" and kissing his cheek at the same time. "I win." I said with a bright smile and felt him laughing as he looped his arms under my legs, putting his stake in his pocket.

"Only today, Roza. You wait until I learn all of your tricks, then you'll see." Dimitri said, not breaking his guardian mask but I could see in his eyes that we were back to "lovers Dimitri and Rose" and not "Teacher Dimitri and Student Rose".

"No Strigoi will live long enough to learn all my tricks." I pointed out, putting my face on his shoulder and moping a little. He totally was killing my victory.

"But one should always come up with extra tricks to have up their sleeves, just in case." Dimitri let go of my legs and I considered just staying on his back for a moment, but reconsidered as I realized we were at the door. Damn. I really could have used more time with Dimitri my boyfriend. I hopped down and before he opened the door he took my chin in his hand and tilted my head upward, placing a far to gentle kiss on my lips. I wanted more than that. Sparks flew between us but we both knew this wasn't the right place or time for that and so, taking a very similar deep breath, we sighed and walked into his mother's home.

Surprisingly enough, no one else was up so Dimitri led me to the kitchen and forced me into a chair while he pulled out some food. "Hey, let me help you." I didn't like the fact that he wasn't going to let me help.

"You know how to make Russian food?" He asked, but he sounded like he knew the answer already.

"Actually, Olena was teaching me in the weeks that I lived here. You could teach me more. Why do you only want to teach me fighting, hm? Worried I'll kick your ass in other fields too?" I said, barely holding the laugh in as I saw his face. He seemed reproachful that I'd sworn at him, amused at my challenge, and surprised at something.

"My mother actually let you cook with her?" He asked with slightly widened eyes, amusement still tinting the overall appearance of them.

"Yes. So? Let me help. Teach me." I said, standing and walking right up to the counter he was chopping something on.

"Alright, fine. Take this and dice it, then put it in that pot over on the stove. Can you handle that?" Dimitri's sarcasm felt like a challenge. And I never back down from a challenge. I took the plant he handed me and the knife out of the knife block and nodded.

I didn't want to work next to him. For some reason, I felt like I was a kid in elementary school who didn't want anyone to copy my work. With my station – across the kitchen from Dimitri's – set up, I began chopping up the thick, long plant carefully and quickly. But mostly quickly.

He and I stood, him tossing vegetables to me to dice and me tossing him dirty looks. He didn't even seem to care about my job, if I was doing it right or not. 'He'll see the finished product. Then he'll have to admit I'm not helpless in the kitchen.' I thought to myself with a bit of smugness.

After about half an hour, Olena got up and scolded me and Dimitri for making breakfast instead of letting her do it. Apparently she'd had some big surprise breakfast planned. After she finished, though, she smiled to us both and kissed my forehead and pulled Dimitri down to do the same to him before walking out of the room to wake the others.

"So, Comrade, what concoction have we made today? Another recipe from before the fall of the Berlin Wall?" I asked lightly. He was taking the pot off of the oven and putting it on an oven mitt in the center of the dining room table.

"I cannot believe you failed History." Was all he said in reply and I grinned widely.

"Hey, I already told you–" But Dimitri interrupted me.

"Yes yes, you need material for your jokes."

We set the dining room table in silence and I allowed my thoughts to wander around, finding them on Lissa and the plans the Strigoi had for her.

"They're not going to give up on Lissa, are they?" I asked quietly as I set the last plate on the table.

"No. In fact, they may double their efforts now that they know she can turn them back into their original forms." Dimitri replied just as quietly, but I could hear that protective edge in his voice. "Not only that but you made a number of enemies in the Strigoi with your Vampire Slayer approach to finding me. With you protecting Lissa, they'll be careful, but if they best you, neither of you will make it out alive."

His words, of course, made perfect sense to me. Just why the hell would my killing Strigoi every night not piss them off? But they still scared me. I didn't want to endanger Dimitri's family and my actions had already endangered my best friend.

"We need to leave today. I mean Russia as a whole. We'll drop Lissa off at the Court, where she'll be safest, until this whole thing is taken care of." I said calmly, setting out some of the bread Dimitri pointed me to on the table at two ends.

"Do you think she'll stay there?" He asked.

"She won't try to leave without a guardian. Lissa's smart. Besides, even if it's tough on her, she'll be with Christian and Mia there. They'll take care of her. Oh, and Mikhail too. He's a nice guy." I said, getting a little sidetracked but trying to stop the conversation before Lissa woke up and walked in on it. It was best to just spring things on her so she couldn't plot.

"So that's your decision then?" Abe appeared in the doorway to the dining room so quietly, I would have staked him if I hadn't seen the sun up.

"Yes. Will you make sure she's safe?" I asked, pulling out a chair for him to sit in and taking the seat immediately next to it.

He sat where I'd instructed and Dimitri sat across from me as everyone, sans Lissa, walked in for breakfast.

"Of course. Your mother and I will step in as temporary guardians for Lissa until her two real ones can return." Abe pledged and my mother walked in with a confused look in her eyes.

"Why are you volunteering me for something like that, Ibrahim? I have responsibilities to the family I protect. Lissa will be perfectly protected at the court." Gee, thanks mom. Like always you ruin my opinion of you as soon as it starts to turn good.

"Then Abe, you just keep an eye on her and use your contacts to tell us if something's up, okay?" I said gruffly, shooting a brief glare at my mother.

I got up from the table, my chair scraping against the linoleum and walked up the stairs straight into Viktoria and Lissa's room, not bothering to knock.

"Good morning sunshine." Viktoria said sarcastically, smiling brightly at me.

"Yeah. Morning." I replied, not really in the mood for the happy go lucky crap right now.

"Your mom?" Lissa guessed. Ah, the poor girl knew me too well. Sometimes I wondered if she was lying when she said the bond only went one way.

"Yeah. She's so…dutiful. It's like she doesn't even have a heart." I sighed and looked at Lissa and Viktoria, noticing that the girls were, indeed, dressed and continued. "Anyway, breakfast is ready. Everyone else is down there already. Dimitri and I made it." I was proud I'd gotten Dimitri to let me cook with him and was sure he wouldn't say anything about the job I did. He didn't like to stroke my ego.

"Really? Rose, you never cook." Lissa said with a grin. Well, at least I had one fan.

"Rose cooks all the time here." Viktoria's tone screamed confusion and she glanced between Lissa and me.

"Well, you see, I usually don't cook… I just liked spending time with Olena." I said with a nervous laugh, rubbing my neck where all my tattoos lay. "But hey, it's getting cold. Let's go!"

**There's another chapter. I'm starting to grow pretty fond of this... In fact, I found myself working on chapters in my biology class today between notes because I hate my teacher. XD Anyway, I'm making time for it. There's two hours between my classes while I'm on campus and I take notes on Lappy now, so I should be able to work on FTOP a bit more frequently than I'd originally thought. Anyway, reviews are loved~!**

**~Broken Wing Of A Broken Spirit**


	4. Chapter 4

**Alrighty, here's the next chapter. It should be back up to the usual length. Sorry about the delay, guys, but I finally learned how to connect to my school's wireless internet, so if I don't update on time, it's because I'm not finished with the chapter T.T I've already almost caught up to myself. I've got five finished and six is swiftly on its way to completion, but I don't have that five chapter gap anymore T.T**

**Anyway! Thanks everyone for the reviews! But... Can anyone tell me what UD is? XD Sorry, I've been off fanfiction for quite some time. 3 On with the chapter!**

Breakfast was pretty uneventful, if you don't count the fact I was squeezed between my ridiculously dutiful mother and my oversimplifying father. The worst part of it all was that they were crazy about each other, kind of like Dimitri and I without the reserve. So, while I was trying to eat my blini and kasha, I had to deal with my mother and father's lewd comments and all of their little innuendos. That's right. They were talking about sex at the breakfast table. Dimitri, occasionally, when he thought they weren't looking, laughed at me for being stuck in this situation but all it earned him were a few well aimed glares until he started looking at me with a little sympathy. A couple of minutes was funny. An hour and a half? Not so much.

I found myself leaving breakfast, in spite of the good food, in a horrible state of mind. My mother and father wanted to bang each other ASAP and I knew _all_ about it. I left the kitchen without saying a word and eventually I left the entire house too, just wanting to roam and get some of this anger out of me. I hadn't made it but five steps before I heard the door open and shut and footsteps hitting the concrete path.

"Well, that was a pleasant breakfast." I heard Lissa say, feeling through the bond that she knew what my mother and father had been discussing through what they must have thought was a clever code.

"Oh, did you get to share in the 'business plans' too?" I asked, the anger in my voice and swelling in my stomach kind of surprising me. Then again, it had been a while since I'd let a bit of Lissa's darkness out so I was kind of like a time bomb counting down the incidents I could tolerate. I was coming dangerously close to zero and it seemed Lissa realized it.

"Yeah, I was on the other side of your mom. Besides, it's not like they were talking quietly. The whole table could have heard what they were saying." Lissa almost sounded like she didn't approve, which was enough to make me smile. Sometimes she was such a royal.

"Yeah, but as disgusting as it is, it's in the past. I was just going to take a bit of fresh air and maybe explore the town a little. I was thinking about going to see Nicolai to see if he'd been able to get with Viktoria yet." I said, just coming up with something that was mildly interesting and shrugging my shoulders. What I'd really been planning to do before Lissa came out to lift my mood was beat the crap out of a few helpless trees and pray some Strigoi-allied human decided to come try to kidnap me.

"Who's Nicolai?" I'd expected Lissa to know who he was, but then I realized that she hadn't been along when I was last in Baia.

"Nicolai is Viktoria's Mase. He's totally into her in every way and she doesn't even notice. He looks like a pretty sweet boy." I answered, barely thinking.

"Didn't Olena tell us Viktoria and Nicolai have been dating?" Lissa. Why do you have to have such damn good memory?

"Oh yeah, I must have forgotten." Was all I could supply. My ass was caught.

"Well," I could feel Lissa questioning my answer but didn't do anything to change it, "now that that's established we can go back inside, right?"

"Yeah, I'll be right behind you. Just gonna enjoy a bit of the sun before we switch back to the normal schedule." I said with apparently a convincing enough smile that she believed me and walked inside.

With the time difference, daytime here was nighttime in Montana so we just decided to move by day and Abe's guardians and I would protect the Moroi at night. They were actually pretty cool guys once they opened up. It was the opening up part that was hard but now I felt like I'd made some pretty good friends in some other Dhampirs instead of Moroi all the time.

I stood on the lawn for a while, just staring up into the sky. The sun had moved a small amount so I figured I'd been out here for an hour or so. Finally, someone else came out to check on me.

"Roza, meditating isn't a part of our training regiment."

I huffed a laugh and turned my gaze from the sky and on his. His beautiful brown eyes stared into mine with an amused look floating in them as he walked a little closer.

"Well, I figured why not give it a whirl after a breakfast like that? Better than clawing my mother's throat out. Hey, do you still have that training dummy?" I asked with a dark feeling in my stomach. Attacking that thing right now would feel amazing.

"A couple of things. You wouldn't be able to claw out your mother's throat. The training dummy belongs to St. Vladimir's. And that wouldn't be a healthy exercise for an instructor to allow his student to take part in." Dimitri was so logical, it honestly pissed me off. You know that time bomb thing? Yeah.

"I could demolish my mother before she even had the chance to blink! Don't you dare tell me what I'm not able to do! And it would be a hell of a lot healthier than fantasizing about her real death, wouldn't it be? Damn it, Dimitri. Can't you for once be my boyfriend instead of my teacher? All the time it's lessons, lessons, lessons and there isn't ever any time left over for you and I to actually hang out with each other and get to know each other! We're always either training or guarding Lissa, or talking about what's good for my health. Why don't we do anything? Why can't we go for a morning walk instead of a run? Why can't we go to a movie instead of a Moroi party? There are other guardians. Why do we take it upon ourselves to be the only guardians in the entire Dhampir community who don't use their vacation?" I was panting with my anger when I finished pelting him with my questions and it surprised me so much, I wasn't sure what had just happened. Had I really just yelled at Dimitri to tell him to abandon his duty for me? We couldn't do that.

"Feeling a little better, Roza?" Dimitri's ever patient voice asked me calmly, though I could see in his eyes that my words had hurt him.

"Dimitri, I didn't mean it. We have to train or we'll not be good guardians and there's still a lot I need to learn." I didn't think anything I said now would change what I'd just thrown in his face.

"You've also got a point, though, Rose. We have some vacation time, we've chosen not to use it, and now we're seeing that is a mistake. Things will get better when we leave Lissa at the court and have time where we can just be us." Dimitri's arms circled around me and I realized just what my words had done. He was remembering, like I was now, when he had me captured in his suite as a Strigoi and had showered me with fake love and tried to woo me with pretty dresses and jewelry. That certainly wasn't what I wanted either, but it felt good to be appreciated like that, even if he was only trying to seduce me into becoming something I never wanted to be.

"Things will get better when I can find a release for this darkness that doesn't involve going insane on whoever happens to say the wrong thing." I said with a sigh, backing out of his grip and smiling at him. "For now, lets go enjoy our last hour or two with your family. Maybe we can get Viktoria to invite Nicolai and you can scare him out of his wits. Or, there's always the option of teaching your nephew. I told him I would train him a little before I left, but I think he'd rather get his mini-lesson from you. Oh, and teach him something fun, will you?" I smirked at him, recalling the first three months of my training was running, running, a moment of sparing, then more running.

"We'll see, Roza." He said with a laugh, putting his arm around my shoulders and guiding me back to the front door, pulling it open for me in a very gentlemanly way.

When we got inside, I saw Lissa and Viktoria trying to skitter away before we saw them, but it was a useless effort. Viktoria hadn't had any training in being stealthy and Lissa had a bond to me that told me [i]_everything_[/i] she was thinking. "Lissa." I said in my best reproachful voice.

"Vika." Dimitri followed my lead and used his little sister's nickname. "Exactly what were you doing standing here in the foyer?" Nailed 'em. And I couldn't have done a better scary and reproachful voice than Dimitri if I'd had a hundred years to practice it.

"We were just passing through!" Viktoria said quickly and defensively, and I could feel that Lissa was too ashamed, and a little scared, to answer.

"But according to Lissa's feelings, it seems you were eavesdropping on us." I supplied, keeping my tone as curious and playful as possible. "Why would you two do something like that? What if we'd been talking about something very private that shouldn't be discussed at the breakfast table? We may have scarred your pure little minds for life." I could hardly contain the laugh at Lissa's mortified thoughts of hearing me talk about sex. She couldn't even picture it, she was that scared. At least she didn't have to see it. I shuddered at the memories of Christian and her together in the attic of the church. How many times had that happened? It was a wonder Liss wasn't pregnant with how often they shacked up together up there.

"Keh, who said my mind was pure?" Viktoria said with a scoff, then seemed to realize what she'd just said in front of her elder brother. And when I looked at Dimitri, I could completely understand the fear that crossed over Viktoria's eyes.

"What did you say, Vika?"

Oh man, I needed to get out of here before I had to witness a side of Dimitri that was better left unseen. Where could I go? Nowhere fast enough, apparently, and Viktoria just couldn't resist making him angry, could she?

"I said my mind isn't pure, Dimka." She said in a very Rose-like fashion. Oh no, I was gonna hear it from Dimitri later.

"And just why is that?" Dimitri asked, the same darkness tingeing his tone as he had when he was intimidating the two of them for spying on us.

"Dimitri, I think there are some things that are better left unknown. Why don't we just find Paul and give him a lesson or two in staking us, hm?" I pulled on his arm, not wanting to witness this family feud that I was all too sure was going to happen if we stayed here any longer.

"Of course." Dimitri said, returning to his guardian face which, for once, I was quite happy about. I didn't want to be around for the big reveal about Viktoria's almost-blood-whore adventures. Dimitri seemed like the kind of brother that would hunt the asshole – whose name I couldn't remember – down to chop of his balls personally.

Without another word, Dimitri and I walked away from Lissa and Viktoria quietly, leaving them to talk to each other about our private conversation as we tried to track down Paul. He wasn't hard to find; the kid spent a lot of time outside beating things up with a stick and faking stabbing everything he saw. When we found him this time, he was fighting what appeared to be five invisible Strigoi and was, apparently, doing a damn good job, though he did take a couple of hits, throwing himself all across the lawn and "into trees" before hopping up and staking the "Strigoi" who had hurt his "Moroi".

The kid really had quite the imagination, and I wondered if Dimitri had been that cute when he was Paul's age. I mean, hell, they looked the same, who's to say they didn't act the same? Then again, I'd never seen Paul with a book in his hand period and that seemed to be how Dimitri killed his time.

"Paul, do you mind Uncle Dimka and me interrupting to teach you a little bit?" I asked, crouching down on my knees and smiling at him. He'd staked the last "Strigoi" and had been about to tend to his "Moroi" before I'd decided to jump in.

"Really? Sure!" The kid's eyes lit up so much, I felt like we were his heroes.

Instead of helping Dimitri teach, I sat on the side with a glass of lemonade and Olena, watching Dimitri hand his stake to the ten year old and telling him to stake him. Dimitri wasn't going all out, but he certainly wasn't going to give the kid a free kill. They were jumping back and forth, Dimitri dodging everything and poking Paul and Paul throwing kicks and punches wherever he could. The kid was smart to attack Dimitri full on, but he wasn't using much strategy. I noted a few times where Dimitri could have made a killing blow, being a Strigoi, but he didn't point them out to Paul, which I thought was pretty nice of him. Then again, maybe he was planning to bring it up when they were finished with the spar.

After about ten minutes of the same old thing, Dimitri purposely messed up and let Paul tackle him to the ground and "stake" him. They laughed together and Paul wanted to practice some more with Dimitri, eventually drawing the entire house to watch. My mother hopped in on the training, eventually sparring right straight with Dimitri and telling the kid the things he should do to catch a Strigoi off guard. Luckily, this time, my mother was going to act as the Strigoi and Dimitri was the guardian.

Their spar was much faster and much more intense and everyone around me, I saw, was holding their breath. Being the only guardian observing the fight, I wasn't looking at it in the way that they were, I was watching the fight and noticing the mistakes that they were making. Well, lack thereof really because there weren't any mistakes between the two of them, which is what made the spar last so long. Finally, Dimitri seemed to catch my mom in the middle of a kick and beat her foot away, spinning her so her back was to him and tackling her. He "staked" her and they both started laughing. Lissa, Abe, and the  
Dhampirs all released their breath and I stood up, putting my stake down on the table and walking up to Dimitri.

"Now I'm the Strigoi." I said with a smirk. He looked pleasantly surprised and gripped his stake tightly in his hand, smirking back at me.

I attacked him straight on, trying to punch him in the face, but he dodged out of the way so I kicked off of him. He and I threw a few punches and kicks at each other, neither of us landing anything, then he finally connected a really good punch right to my cheek, knocking me back a couple of feet. Oh, so he wasn't going to hold back? Well then, neither was I. I pictured him, briefly, with those ruby red eyes and flew at him, connecting a punch right into his gut, causing him to grunt and double over a little, an amused expression lighting his eyes a little bit, but I punched that right off of his precious face and he almost fell. I launched a kick at his knee, successfully knocking it out from beneath him and making him fall. When he did fall, I straddled him and slammed a fist into his arm, causing him to tighten his grip on his stake, so I hit his wrist and he released it. As soon as he did that, I pinned his arms down and lowered my mouth to his neck, kissing him gently.

"I win, Comrade." I whispered, kissing his neck one more time before standing and getting his stake for him. My mother and father were grinning wildly and Lissa was so swollen with pride I felt like she was going to burst. The Belikova family, sans Yeva, looked a bit surprised but weren't altogether unhappy.

"Did you like my new trick?" I asked with a smirk, tilting my head innocently to the side and laughing as Dimitri sent me a playful glare, laughing along.

"Roza, you definitely learn quickly. Good job." Now I was swollen with pride. He didn't hand out compliments often.

"I don't mean to interrupt the training session but our plane leaves in about two hours and the airport isn't exactly close." Ah, Abe, way to ruin a good time. But he had a point, we needed to get back to Pennsylvania soon if Dimitri and I were going to find Lissa's sibling. We needed to get this whole Dhampir children running out and getting themselves killed thing over and done with.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that one. The queen bitch took my testimony, didn't think about Mase, and decided that Dhampir were good to go out and fight Strigoi at sixteen rather than the original eighteen. I needed to have Lissa in on the voting panel to get that one overturned since the queen used Lissa's vote to break the tie in the favor of the age drop.

But then, later on in the day, the queen summoned me to her quarters and told me there was still something I could do. That Lissa's dad fathered an illegitimate child and that they were somewhere in the Vegas area last she'd heard. I needed to find this person and make them come into the Moroi world to keep the Dragomir line voting and strong. That was information I hadn't told Dimitri yet.

I mean yes, we did have to take care of this Strigoi problem. But we didn't need children sacrificing themselves, getting in our way, or worse, boosting their numbers.

Dimitri, Lissa, and I all went upstairs to pack our bags and while Lissa was in Viktoria's room, I started to tell Dimitri what I'd learned, starting with the thing he'd take the worst opinion on.

"They lowered the age for Dhampir to become guardians while you were gone." I hoped he wouldn't put on his guardian mask, but I also hoped that he wouldn't get raging mad. In fact, I would prefer guardian face.

Unfortunately, I got the glare. "Why would they do that?"

"The Moroi don't want to use magic to defend themselves and would rather we kill ourselves than worry about learning to protect themselves for a damn change." I was pretty pissed off about it, but I don't think that even came close to matching Dimitri's anger. "They took my testimony while they were debating it. They didn't tell me what it was about but they made me sound like a freakin goddess of war. I thought they were debating making me a guardian after all. Not the case." I was hoping Dimitri wouldn't be too mad at me and was glad to see his eyes soften as he looked at me.

"Roza, it's not your fault. The court likes to make one exceptional person sound like the norm. We'll find a way to get this decision reversed." Dimitri came over to me and held my cheek in his hand, making me feel my own tears. That's why he was being so nice. I was crying. God damn it. But now he wasn't looking at me with sympathy but with that look where he was worried about my sanity. "And you think you have a way."

Wow. Was I that transparent? "The queen bitch told me that Lissa's got a sibling in Vegas somewhere and that if we found them, Lissa would get to vote on it and she could overturn the ruling. Lissa's dad apparently got around." I was talking quietly, hyper aware of Lissa packing happily down the hall.

"Don't call her that if she's helping you." Dimitri admonished, tapping my nose like one did a bad dog. I stuck my tongue out at him and went back to packing.

"Well, hey, it's not exactly like she likes me anyway. I think she just believes Moroi should get off their asses and fight for a change. I mean, Lissa fights, Christian fights, Mia fights, Tasha fights, but who else do you know that's a Moroi fights?" I said with a bit of defensiveness creeping into my tone, but I knew he had a point. The queen was really going out on a limb for me and trusting me to find someone I didn't even have a gender for! God, I wasn't that resourceful.

Or was I?

I decided I was going to call Sydney when I got out on the road with Dimitri and see what I had to do to get her to give me the information I needed. Maybe Abe could help me. Decisions, decisions.

"Nevertheless, the queen has entrusted you with very sensitive information she didn't even tell Lissa, you should be more respectful to her than that." Dimitri went back to packing too, pulling out some spare clothes his mother had kept in his room for him since I hadn't thought to bring anything for him. His traditional duster was resting on the back of a chair by his desk and after I finished packing, I walked over to it and touched it lightly.

The leather was soft under my fingers, which I found fairly surprising considering the look of it. When I picked it up off the back of the chair, the weight of the material surprised me again. It was pretty heavy considering the size and look of it. When I folded it hastily over my arm, I was assaulted with the wonderful scent that was Dimitri. When he finished packing, I almost felt like a wife sending her husband off to war handing the coat to him the way I did.

But he was going off to war. We both were. He and I shared a look that was both full of love and full of duty. We knew what we had to do and we weren't about to have a lover's moment in the middle of his bedroom when we needed to leave.

"We'll talk more on the plane, Roza, okay? As soon as Princess Dragomir is asleep." Oh yeah, we were in guardian mode now.

"Of course." I said in reply, grabbing my bags and watching Dimitri take his. We tossed them into the back of Abe's Hummer and shortly after that Lissa came down with her pack.

"Thank you so much for allowing us to stay here with you, Olena. I really missed you guys." I said lightly, hugging Olena briefly before hugging the rest of the family.

"Don't even think about ever thanking me again. You're part of our family now. As soon as Sonya has her baby, we'll send some pictures to you and Dimka and Lissa." Olena said with a smile, pulling her way too tall son down into a huge, motherly hug.

"Oh we would love that. Thank you." Lissa said with a smile, walking over to Olena without intending to give her a hug, which was beyond my comprehension. Nevertheless, when Olena wrapped her in her arms, Lissa's happiness skyrocketed and I was actually pulled into her head with the emotion. Quickly I yanked myself back out, which took some effort, and we all smiled and left.

The airport was a long, mundane car ride away. We were talking, yes. Well, Lissa, my mother, Abe and his guardians were talking but it wasn't anything of consequence, which I think is why Dimitri and I didn't join in. When we got there, Abe escorted us to a private plane where everyone could sit with plenty of room to breathe and we began the long, single stop flight back to the States. Dimitri and I didn't get a chance to talk to each other because I got the worst migraine ever, as I always did while flying, and saw the black spots were everywhere. Eventually, it got so bad halfway between Germany and the ocean that I passed out from the pain.

I woke up to Dimitri gently shrugging his shoulder wordlessly, bouncing my head and annoying me awake. I'd apparently nestled myself against him somewhere in the plane ride but it was over now and I needed to get my head back in the game. There were wards around the airport that we landed at, thankfully, and my head was pounding with the residual effects of the spirits pressing in on me. It scared me less now that I knew what they were and how to get rid of them, but I was still not comfortable with it all. The ride back to the Court was quiet and I was plagued with the occasional spirit, but not enough that I would send them off. One or two could be ignored.

We got back to the Court in the middle of the day and we were all pretty exhausted. Dimitri and I got a room with each other, Lissa immediately went to find Christian; and Abe and my mom got a room together too, no doubt acting out their plans they were making at breakfast.

After sleeping for three hours, I woke Dimitri and we left the Court quietly, just before the sun went down. Yes, it was time that we left, before Lissa could notice or do anything about it but after catching up on enough sleep to function.

"I need to get a disposable cell phone." I announced as we drove out, and Dimitri eyed me curiously.

"Oh? And why is that?" He asked as we drove by a Rite-Aid.

"Because. I need to call an Alchemist I know and it would be to our advantage to keep in touch with both her, and Zmey." I explained, and Dimitri seemed to be satisfied since he pulled into a Wal-Mart and got me a crappy little phone with 500 minutes on it. Better keep my conversations brief. I dialed the number I had memorized and heard a groggy voice answer the phone.

"Sydney? It's Rose. I need some information."

**Dun dun dun - Another one bites the dust! XD Reviews are amazing~!**

**~Broken Wings**


	5. Chapter 5

**Alrighty. Hey everyone. Sorry for the delay, I've been sooooooooo busy lately. I had a choir concert last night (which was amazing) so I had rehearsals all this week and work when I wasn't rehearsing. Also had to fight to get my car fixed XD It was just a mess. Anyway, here's chapter five. I'm working on six now, which means if you guys are reeeeeeaaally nice to me, I might put it up before I start chapter seven. Also, disregard my question last chapter, I figured it out XD**

**Anyway, here is chapter five, my friends! Enjoy~!**

To say that Sydney sounded surprised to hear from me was about the understatement of the year. The girl nearly flipped out when I told her what I needed and initially she refused until I told her that I'd be able to get her Stateside again. Then she told me she'd see what she could do.

Okay, so blackmailing my somewhat friend, the only person who accompanied me in Russia almost all the way through, was pretty low. In fact, I felt like zmey for even considering it. I was my father's child after all.

And speaking of my father, he was the very next person I called. I told him about what I'd offered Sydney in exchange for her help and he told me it would be a simple task that he could easily arrange once she got me what I needed. I finished all of my important tasks before we even left Pennsylvania. We weren't going to fly, use any credit cards, or use our real names around anyone but each other for this trip simply because we couldn't afford to be tracked. It was a good thing I tossed out Adrian's credit card after I got back from Russia. I would have been tempted to use it in a situation like this and the last thing  
Dimitri and I needed was my would-be boyfriend swooping in.

We'd made it down to about the middle of Kentucky before Dimitri decided he needed to rest some. I didn't know how to drive and obey the laws, surprisingly enough, and he didn't want to teach me how to.

There was a little hotel on the side of the highway and we pulled off and parked our little Pilot just outside of the office. "Okay, so what're we gonna do?" I asked, making sure no one could see my stake.

"We'll talk more in the hotel room, Roza. For now, we check in." Dimitri said with a sigh and while I was tempted to fight him for more information, I saw how tired he was and decided it was best to let it drop for now. I should let him sleep a bit.

We walked in and checked in as Maria and Eduard Bulnir. The man didn't question us at all and handed us a key to room 206, ushering us out like he had other customers to deal with. "Well." I said when I heard the door close behind us. "Customer service is a zero. Let's see if the rooms can pass a three." Dimitri laughed and I ran to the car to grab our duffle bags. He tried to protest it but when he tried to take a bag I bit him – not very hard – and told him I was going to take them upstairs. I didn't have any hands to fight him with.

When we got to the room, I dropped the duffle bags on the wooden table in the corner and immediately flipped on the TV. Dimitri secured the room and walked into the bathroom connected to the room while I collapsed on the queen bed that rested in the middle of the room. It was kind of tacky, particularly the fake stuffed deer head that hung on the wall over the bed and the camouflage duvet cover that I rested on top of now. It smelled like stale cigarette smoke and I felt the headache coming on already. I decided to check in on Lissa and see what she'd decided about Dimitri and me.

And I kind of liked what I saw.

Lissa was sad, but not in that way that she was upset with us for leaving her. She seemed pretty okay with us not being there. So, since her mind wasn't too perilous a place to be, I decided to pop in and see what she was doing.

Christian was leveling her out, which I immediately felt like laughing about. He understood me a lot better than I'd initially believed he'd ever be capable of, and he was telling her a very logical reason for Dimitri and I to have taken off.

"Lissa, Rose and Dimitri just want to protect you. Dimitri knows of every Strigoi out there that wants to hurt you and they are both some of the best guardians in our world right now. I bet they're out there working to keep you safe. You know Rose, if she can keep you away from a fight, she will." Christian had me nailed down to a T. Except, he didn't know that I was really out looking for Lissa's half-sibling so she could fight in the courts for young Dhampirs.

"I know. I just wish she would say something before leaving on these suicide missions of hers." Lissa said in response and I could feel Christian's arms wrap gently around her shoulders. The two of them had been through a lot and it was nice to see them getting along so well, thanks mostly to the fact that Lissa finally stopped fighting him and Christian got over himself. Christian realized that Lissa hadn't meant to kiss her ex and Lissa finally admitted that even if Christian was being a prick, he was just hurt over what happened and she decided to open up and talk to him.

"Ah, but then she wouldn't be the Rose that we all know and love." Christian said, and I felt myself laughing and wanting to call him an array of names. I heard Dimitri come out of the bathroom and pulled myself out of Lissa's mind and back into my own.

"Dimitri, I'm going to go talk to Sydney really quick. She told me to call her back in a few hours and, well, you drove for twelve hours straight." I said with a laugh, kissing his forehead lightly and popping out of the bed and out the door. I pulled out the phone and dialed Sydney's number, listening to the tone ring three times before Sydney finally answered.

"Rose, information on the Dragomirs is hard to get access to. Your lovely queen decided to lock a lot of it up." Sydney said, her voice sounding a little weary.

"That's fine. I just need to know a general place of where to start looking." I said back, leaning against the railing in front of me and looking down at the parking lot a story below.

"Well, all I've got is the Dragomir head had a daughter in Vegas with some Moroi woman with a fair amount of Dragomir blood in her but not enough to be royal. Enough for the daughter to carry the Dragomir name though. I'm not sure if she does. Her mother apparently felt a little jaded by Vasilisa's dad not sticking around. Although, I do have the address that Lord Dragomir was sending checks to." Sydney didn't know the gold she'd dug up.

"Sydney, that's great. Just let me grab a pen and paper." I ran back into the hotel room and rummaged around in the drawers until I found the stationary. "Alright. Give it to me." I said, and Sydney immediately read it off. I copied it down and relayed it back to her to double check it. Immediately Dimitri was over my shoulder, checking out the address and I didn't miss the hand that rested on the table, causing him to put his head quite close to mine.

"Alright, Sydney, you said that this illegitimate child was female, right? Any idea how old she is?" I asked, writing down the word 'female' underneath the address.

"Younger than Vasilisa, but only by one or two years. Supposedly she has dark hair, is tall, has the Dragomir pale green eyes, and is pale, like most Moroi." She really didn't know the information she'd gotten me.

"Sydney, you did great. Any particular city you want to move into?" I asked. Now it was time to discuss my end of the deal as I scrawled down the information Sydney had given me. She told me her preferences and I laughed when she told me she wanted to move to New Orleans. Go figure Sydney the Alchemist was a party girl. I told her I'd handle the arrangements and give her a call with the date she was leaving.

"That's what we're looking for, then?" Dimitri asked, he still hadn't moved away from me. It seemed like he didn't even realize how close he was to me. I nodded and kept myself exactly where I was, breathing deeply and evenly and keeping my emotions under control. "So she's in Vegas, is Moroi, has the Dragomir eyes, and dark hair?" I nodded again. Dimitri took the paper off of the table and the pen out of my hand and he began to pace the room, reminding me just slightly of when he was a Strigoi, pacing the room he'd locked me in while waiting for me to tell him I wanted to become like him.

"How are we going to get down to Vegas without the Princess tracking us down?" He asked, looking right at me. He was asking me for the plan instead of the other way around for once. And the funny thing was, I kind of did have a plan too. I mean, it was a work in progress, but a plan nonetheless.

"Well I was thinking we should drive. Maybe we should trade in the Moroi Government Issued SUV for something else and just drive that down to Vegas. It's a long drive, but it's a lot easier to drive somewhere and not be tracked than fly somewhere. Lissa will no doubt be trying to find someone to get her flight records of the city where we cell this car. I don't think she'll plan on us driving out." I said, tracing the grains of the table while I was talking and watching my finger pale out as I put pressure on the table.

"That sounds like a good plan Roza. What about the Strigoi?" Oh great. A test.

"Well, we'll have to stop in whatever town we come across when the sun goes down. Since we can't very well involve other Guardians or Moroi, we're probably going to have to take shifts sleeping. We'll move onto the human schedule since that's the one that'll keep us safe from both Lissa, and the Strigoi. Besides that, it lowers our chance of being seen by anyone that Lissa could contact." I said with a sigh, putting my head against the cool desk and feeling my hair fall around my face.

"Great job, Roza. I'm very proud of you." Dimitri said, and even though he couldn't see it, I smiled widely. It was so great to have him back.

"This motel doesn't seem like it suffers the frequent visits of Strigoi. Should we chance sleeping at the same time?" I asked, somewhat liking the idea of him and I getting to sleep in the same bed again.

"I don't know Roza. What if we're attacked? When we're sleeping, we're the most vulnerable." He said, but I could see it in his eyes that he was wishing for the same thing I was.

"I don't think we'll be attacked tonight, Comrade." Please work, please work!

"Okay, Roza. We'll sleep at the same time tonight. But only tonight." Dimitri warned, looking at me in a way that I can only assume was supposed to be a definitive glance. I nodded my head and hopped out of the bed, running over to my bag and pulling out some pajamas I'd brought along and running into the bathroom. Just before I closed the door I saw him, his back facing me, remove his shirt and my jaw just about dropped. Man he looked good!

I changed as quickly as I could but when I emerged he was just laying in the bed, under the covers, staring at the door in wait for me. I saw him quirk an eyebrow at me at my shorts and tank top, but I, being the smart ass that I am, said, "You know, if you take a picture it'll last longer." He shot me a halfhearted glare, then hopped out of the bed and started going through my bag. I thought he was going to tell me to change until I saw him pull out the phone that he'd bought me – that had a camera built in mind you – and hold it up in front of me. I bent forward slightly while laughing at him and he started to chuckle too.

Both of us crawled into the bed chuckling and I said, "I honestly didn't think you'd know how to work one of those, Comrade." I felt him laugh a little more and pull me so I was looking at him.

"Roza, we had cameras when I was your age, believe it or not. Seven years isn't that long." He said, faking being offended. He pulled me close and I breathed in the scent of his aftershave mixed with just him. It was intoxicating. Dimitri was intoxicating.

"I hope it takes a while to find this girl." I said after a moment of just laying in Dimitri's arms. I wasn't sure if he was asleep or not until I felt him shift his head so he was looking at me.

"Why do you say that?" He asked, and I could hear in his voice how tired he was. All he wanted to do was sleep right now.

"I don't want to go back to the 'strictly business' relationship. I don't want to keep fighting off the feelings I have for you. As long as we're out here, we can be a couple but once we're back in the Moroi world, fighting Strigoi almost daily and protecting Lissa from both them and us. I don't want to go back to being a guardian after this. It sucks." I ranted and I felt Dimitri's chest rise and fall slowly with a large, drawn out sigh.

"Rose, there's something I should tell you." Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. He can't be seriously planning on leaving me when this is all over. I remained silence and he took that as a prompt to continue, but he held me tighter. "I'm going to ask to be reassigned." I felt myself starting to pull away and felt his perplexed eyes on me as he continued, "When we get back I'm going to ask to be reassigned to the courts. They get quite a bit of vacation time and I'm quite sure the Princess will be spending a lot of her time there. Remember? I was telling you about this right…" I laughed as he trailed off.

"What's so funny?" He asked, pulling me away so I would look at him.

"What point of reference do you use there? 'Right before I was turned Strigoi'? Or, 'Right after I slept with you'? Ooo, or how about, 'Right after you went berserk with Lissa's madness and almost killed Jesse Zelkos'?" I laughed again and heard him laugh too. Yeah, that had been a pretty insane day.

"Either way, Roza. My point is that we won't have to go back to that. We can be together. The Court is so heavily guarded; Lissa wouldn't need you with her all the time." I nodded, but didn't say anything more. "Now get some rest." He told me, and it was like my entire body fell to his command. Within moments, I fell into a deep sleep.

The morning came too early. Way too early. But the clock said that we'd gotten seven hours of sleep so it was time to hit the road to Las Vegas. We both got in the car wordlessly and drove for almost an hour in that same comfortable silence before Dimitri took one hand off the wheel and put it on the shifter in a relaxed fashion. "Did you want any coffee or breakfast?" He asked, looking over at me. I still wasn't functioning very well yet so it was all I could do to nod at him.

He exited at the next "Food Next Right" sign that showed a place that served coffee and pulled into the parking lot, swiftly finding a place and coming around to the front of the car to meet me. I walked right up to him and wiggled my way under his arms, wrapping my own around his middle, and snuggled my face into his chest. I made a sleepy groan and he wrapped his arms around me in a tight embrace and started laughing. "You can sleep in the car if you'd like Roza. I'll get you food, I promise."

Vehemently, I shook my head and said "No way, Comrade. Who knows what nutritious crap you might get me." I laughed and pulled away from him, sliding my hand into his and leading him into the store. I was getting more awake by the second, but a nice hot chocolate and a breakfast sandwich would do me some good. We ordered three breakfast sandwiches – two of them were for the man-beast that I've never seen eat – and a coffee and a hot chocolate and, upon receiving our order, got back in the car and hit the road again.

Dimitri ate so fast! And so much! Two massive breakfast sandwiches later he was still hungry and pulled through a doughnut place to get more food and another coffee. I was perfectly content with my gigantic breakfast sandwich and medium sized hot chocolate.

About another hour into the drive, Dimitri noticed that I hadn't had all of my hot chocolate and chuckled quietly. I don't think I'd ever heard him laugh so much, even with Tasha. "What?"

He shook his head and I got a little frustrated with him, but I continued to keep my temper to myself as much as possible. No reason for a hot head like me to just pop off and make him go back to Guardian Belikov. I looked at him with a look that I hoped told him I wasn't going to accept that answer and he just chuckled again.

"Don't get mad, Roza." Dimitri said with a good natured laugh and tapped the top of my cup. "I just like to think that the reason you aren't finishing this is because mine is better." He smiled, but didn't look at me and I started laughing too.

"Yours is definitely better. You're right, two packets is a hell of a lot better than one." We both laughed a little more and fell into another comfortable silence. Dimitri and I didn't really have much to talk about. He liked those stupid Western novels and _way_ outdated music. Music that I'd once wittily described as music from before the fall of the Berlin Wall. We didn't like talking about our duties. Who liked to talk about killing Strigoi when someone in the car had been one three days ago?

But now I was growing restless. We'd been in the car for four hours, only stopping once for gas and Dimitri didn't want to waste any time so as soon as the tank was filled it was in the car and off we went. Sitting for so long was nearly painful. Standing for eight or ten hours and watching over my best friend and protecting her was one thing. I'd been trained to stand for hours on end and be completely silent and invisible. Sitting for so long? Not in my training. So, I did the first thing I thought of that would get Dimitri to let me get out of the car.

"Let's train for a couple minutes." I said, keeping my eyes on his profile, noticing the scruff forming there and his hair, usually tied neatly behind his neck, coming slightly undone. His face drew into a confused expression and he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "I'm bored and restless. And we haven't trained since night before last, so I don't see why we don't just take a fifteen minute break to have a run or do some light sparring." I saw his face transform as he seemed to remember something.

"I suppose I do owe you some training sessions, don't I?" He said in a slightly solemn, soft voice. I suddenly knew exactly what he was thinking. With a sigh, I started shaking my head and looked right at him as he started to pull over to the side of the road.

"Don't do it because you feel like you owe me. Your Strigoi life is behind you and I want to leave it there." He slowed to a stop and just sat in the seat, staring at me incredulously.

"How can you just forget about what I did, Roza? How can you forgive what I've done to you?" Dimitri pulled his fingers through his hair, a sign of stress that I'd not really seen on him before.

"Because _you_ didn't do that to me. Someone did, but it wasn't you." I said, shrugging my shoulders and sighing. I knew he was going to feel bad but come on.

"But that's just the thing Rose. I remember it. I remember feeling your blood on my lips and loving it. I remember torturing you, throwing you around, yelling at you, threatening you, asking you to become something that you never wanted to be. Something that I never wanted to be. _I_ remember doing these things to you. And I remember wanting to do those things to you. Roza, I'm trying, believe me I am, but I killed many people and I could have killed you. And that is unforgivable. I'm never going to be able to forgive myself for exposing you to that kind of danger." I huffed and Dimitri shook his head and gave a sardonic chuckle.

"Dimitri, you went to Siberia to resist the temptation of seeking me out. I followed you. You told me to stay away, I didn't listen. A Strigoi attacked, and I hesitated. That's all there is to it. Everything that happened to me happened because I made many mistakes trying to do something that I didn't have the skills to accomplish." This time Dimitri huffed and there was a slight growl of disapproval.

"You can kill a Strigoi, Roza. You've got the skills for that." He said quietly, but fiercely. He was offended because he thought I was insulting his training. That was kind of funny.

"Oh, no doubt I can kill a Strigoi. I do have the skills for that. I don't have the skills to bring one back to life though." I replied quietly, not looking at him anymore.

Dimitri was silent, which I took as 'this conversation is over now'.

"So are we gonna train or what?" I asked, a smirk on my face. "I mean, I know you're terrified of me but no one has to know I can kick the bad ass Russian god's ass." I saw Dimitri smile too and eventually let out a low chuckle.

"Oh Roza, you have no idea how much you terrify me." He said seriously, which kind of caught me off guard but I decided to let it go. I hopped out of the car and walked down the slope of the shoulder into a flat clearing at the base of it. Not many people would see us down here, so it would be pretty easy to just spar with reckless abandon down here.

Dimitri and I faced each other and I took an offensive position. This time, I was going to attack first and see where it got me. Dimitri paused for a moment, then put his guardian mask up and slid into a defensive pose. I launched at him, trying to make him believe I would attack him straight on, but he didn't buy it for a second. As soon as I started to go left he caught my arm and threw me back. I jumped to my feet and glared at him.

'_But one should always come up with some extra tricks to have up their sleeves, just in case.'_

Correct, but when exactly did I have time to come up with these extra tricks? Dimitri knew, by now, that he needed to keep his back away from me at all moments and close his stance a little so I wouldn't be able to squeeze under him. Wait, he closes his stance against me.

Perfect.

This time, I circled around and acted like I was going to attack him from the side. He fell for it this time, thinking I wouldn't feint twice in a row, and I was able to slip down beneath his swinging arm to sweep my leg around behind his legs, hitting him at the knees. His natural reflex caused him to nearly collapse at his knees, but he wasn't giving me the opportunity to get in a position to stake him. We rolled around on the ground for a few moments, each fighting for the upper hand, before finally, he pinned me down and held his stake over my heart.

"When you're on the ground with your opponent, it isn't a battle of brute strength. You don't need to worry about throwing your opponent across the clearing or across the room, since likely you won't be able to. What you need to worry about is using your opponent's strength against them." Dimitri said, staying poised on top of me, but putting his stake away.

"What do you mean, exactly?" I asked, trying to both delay parting and learn another trick from him.

"Think of it like Sumo Wrestlers." I snickered, immediately thinking of the overweight men in diapers dancing around a dirt ring. Dimitri's glare silenced me and he continued. "When one of them is charging at another, the latter needs to defend himself, right?" I nodded and felt my face turn in confusion. Where was he going with this? "Well, they can't move that quickly with all that weight that they're carrying so what do they do?"

"Use their opponent's weight against them?" I answered, still not sure how this related to rolling around in the dirt and grass with a Strigoi.

"Exactly. A Sumo Wrestler will turn so he's out of the other's immediate path, then give him a _gentle_ push in the other direction." Dimitri moved off me and stood, offering a hand for me to do the same. "The same principle applies on the ground. If your opponent is trying to pin you by shoving his weight to his left, let him put all his strength into it, then just keep him turning left until you are on top of him. After that, you know what to do." Dimitri schooled me while we were walking back to the car. A few people looked at us strangely as they passed, but I didn't pay them too much mind.

"Can't they stop their momentum though?" I asked after we were in the car and Dimitri was speeding up on the shoulder to merge safely with the freeway traffic.

"Well sure, if they're skilled and you allow them a hand to balance themselves with. If you keep them from getting a hand on the ground and are using your own momentum with theirs, they'll just roll." He said seriously, but I could tell he didn't really want to talk more about it until we could practice it.

The "Welcome to Tennessee" sign glared at us briefly as we passed by. Dimitri and I had decided we were going to go all the way south, then travel west until we got to Las Vegas. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, as Dimitri started to talk to me about where we should stay for the night, I started to hate the idea.

"Memphis or Nashville are probably both good ideas." Dimitri said, not taking his eyes off the road but I could just see the smirk in his eyes. I shook my head and tried to find an excuse not to.

"The courts don't know you're back to being a Dhampir. If any guardians see you there, they might try to stake you. We should go to a small town or an inn on the side of the road." I supplied, it was the best excuse I had.

"Actually, it'd probably be better to be in a large city. Even if there are more Guardians and Moroi, if they notice me, you and I can duck into a crowd and they won't be sure. In a small town, if we encounter a Moroi and a Guardian, we won't be able to get out of their sight in enough time to give any doubt to what they see." Dimitri laid me out, and I knew that he was right, as much as it pained me to admit it.

I didn't argue for a few moments and Dimitri started laughing quietly. "So Roza, Nashville or Memphis?" he asked with an amused chuckle, and immediately I felt myself getting a little agitated.

"You choose. They're both going to be hell for me." I said, hearing the petulance in my voice. I sounded like a child.

"Nashville it is then." Dimitri said with a chuckle, and I shot a halfhearted glare at him. The rest of the drive was a comfortable silence and whenever we stopped for gas, it was only the basest of conversations we shared. We didn't need to talk, and I felt really good about that. Dimitri had a small, relaxed smile as he drove and I was content just to watch the passing scenery, glancing at him every minute or two.

Tennessee wasn't exactly scenic and after half an hour of the same fields, I could see why country was born here. What else did they have to sing about but people plowing their wheat fields and kissing their cousin?

Night was swiftly approaching and I started paying attention to the distance signs posted every fifty miles or so. "Nashville 259 miles", "Nashville 210 miles" "Nashville, 153 miles". I glanced at the clock and saw that it was roughly an hour before sunset and we had over two hours of driving left to go.

"Dimitri, are you sure we shouldn't just pull into an inn? I mean, you've been driving all day and the sun is about to set…" I was going to add more but the look Dimitri gave me, a kind and sincere smile, made me lose my train of thought.

"I appreciate your concern, Roza, but really, I'm fine. We'll just have to speed a little bit won't we?" He looked like a teenage human boy with his first fast car as he pushed harder on the gas pedal. I watched the little needle creep up to eighty, then eighty five, before it finally leveled out at ninety. An hour and a half. Half an hour after sunset. Yeah, what could happen in half an hour, right? Plus, Dimitri, the badass former Strigoi, was one of the most skilled fighters I'd ever seen and if my speculation was right, he still had the Strigoi strength. His speed had reverted back to Dhampir, I knew that, but his strength. That was a different story. At one of the rest stops, I'd decided to instigate a bit of a lover's moment and he picked me up without any effort and held me for the ten minutes the pump took to fill our gas tank while murmuring in my ear and making me laugh. I shifted and his grip never had to tighten, he never showed any signs that I was getting heavy at all. His strength had to have stayed Strigoi, which made him a _very_ valuable asset in battle.

For some reason, though, and it might have to do with the fact that I knew there were Strigoi out there that wanted to kill him for betraying them and kill me for not only saving him, but slaying them and protecting Lissa, I felt like we weren't safe tonight. Like we either had to drive through the night, or stop right now before the sun went down. Nashville just didn't feel safe.

"How about we drive through the night? I'll start driving when we get to the next rest stop and you can sleep in this seat." I asked, smiling at him a little nervously. He threw me a quizzical glance for only a moment, then something seemed to dawn on him. A conclusion that obviously was wrong, but a conclusion.

"Roza, it's really not as bad as you think it's going to be." He said, sounding a little upset at my prejudgment of the city.

"No, I don't care about that. I just feel like we shouldn't stop there. And it isn't because I hate country and cowboys." I added, seeing him open his mouth to protest. "I feel like we should find this sister of Lissa's as quickly as possible. She's freaking out that we're not there with her. She doesn't feel safe."

Dimitri looked skeptical for only a moment, but he nodded and continued driving. "Alright, Roza. We'll drive through the night. The Princess is very important." He didn't make anymore arguments, but I could see he was a little disappointed we weren't going to Nashville.

"Tell ya what, Comrade; in exchange for letting us drive through the night tonight, the next time I get time off, you and I will come down here to Hillbilly Hell and live it up. Sound agreeable?" I laughed a little and saw Dimitri laugh a bit too, immediately putting me at ease.

"That could be agreeable. So long as it's just the two of us." Dimitri said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

"Well of course." I said with a smile and a shrug, leaning back in my seat and resting my head against the headrest.

**So here's a long chapter for all the BS short chapters I've been giving you. Nearly six thousand words so Nyegh! Hahahahaha! I like reviews! 3**

**Broken Wing of a Broken Spirit**


	6. Chapter 6

**After nearly a year, I've returned. And here is chapter six. Really just a bit more fluff while I decide what I want to do with Rose and Dimka. Lol Enjoy~!**

We drove through the night and through most of the next day, only stopping for a bite to eat when we crossed out of Tennessee into Mississippi, then again when we went to some large city that I was already forgetting the name of. Dimitri was tired, and I could see that. We were going to have to stop soon so we could both get some rest. When I glanced at the clock, I noticed that it was 3:45 in the afternoon, and I decided to take action.

"Let's stop for the night, hm?" I asked, glancing at him only briefly then putting my eyes back on the scenery. I didn't want to admit it, but I was kind of hoping Dimitri and I could go out to a movie or something. He'd told me we'd be allowed to be a normal couple on this trip.

"Are you feeling alright, Roza?" Dimitri sounded so worried; I couldn't keep the chuckle from escaping my lips. I nodded my head and smiled at him, watching him slowly relax. Now he was only suspicious of my motives, not worried for my health. "Why did you want to stop then?"

"You look tired and I kind of wanted to watch a movie with you tonight, if you wanted to." I felt suddenly anxious. I knew that he loved me, he'd shown me that, but I didn't know if he was really the 'dating' kind of guy.

"Stop fidgeting, Rose. Nerves don't suit you that well." I immediately unlocked my hands and slapped them into my lap, eliciting a chuckle from my Russian God. He didn't intend to sound harsh and I knew it. Besides, it's not like I'd let something like that hurt my feelings after everything that went on between us when he was Strigoi. "What movie were you thinking of?" He didn't change his facial expression, but I saw in his eyes he kind of wanted to go out.

"I don't know. I don't know what's out Stateside nowadays. I was thinking we could just show up at a theater and check it out." I said with a sigh, leaning back in the seat and dry washing my hands again.

"That sounds agreeable. Let's go arrange a room first, then we'll head to the theater." Dimitri was chuckling again as he reached across the center console and grabbed my left hand. I smirked at him and sighed, watching the scenery again as soon as he went back to the road. We drove on for another twenty or so minutes until Dimirti spotted a sign for an Econolodge and pulled off the freeway. It was a rather large hotel, but not altogether good looking. Oh well, what could one expect from a place with "econo" in the title. Besides, it would probably be cheap, so Dimitri and I wouldn't feel so bad about spending the money.

Suddenly, while looking on this inn and holding Dimitri's hand - perfectly content mind you - I was pulled into Lissa's head. She was sitting with Adrian and Christian and she was extremely angry about something, glancing between the two men. Although I couldn't see them, Lissa was cautious with her words because my mother and father were in the room.

"Lissa, you know that isn't true!" Christian yelled, standing up like her and slamming his hands down on the desk. Lissa rose to the challenge and stood with her arms crossed. What wasn't true?

"Why else would she have left, hm?" Who she? Me? I could feel Lissa's closed-mindedness, something that wasn't usual for Lissa, as Christian tried to answer.

"Lissa, I'm not Rose, I couldn't tell you! But I do know her pretty damn well and she would _never_ leave you alone if she didn't think you would be completely safe. She's probably off making the world a safer place for you right now and you're sitting here screaming about not having your best friend here to listen to you - what? Bitch and cry about how the queen is being so mean to you? 'Rose, should I wear the pink dress or the brown one when I go to see the queen today?' 'Rose, should I wear my hair up or down for the dance?' 'Rose, there's so much pressure on me as a royal.'" While I appreciated Fire Boy standing up for me, there was a bit of pressure on Liss as the last in her line, so I couldn't help but feel a little offended. "Face it, Lissa! While you're playing princess and getting your way 98% of the time, doing whatever you damn well please, Rose is dragged along, keeping you safe, keeping herself out of love, keeping herself away from doing what _she_ wants to do because for the Dhampirs who choose to protect Moroi who won't protect themselves, _you come first_." I could feel Lissa's anger growing larger, but there was also a small hint of guilt.

"Oh, and you're an expert on Rose, huh Chris? You just know everything about her?" Lissa was quiet, but it was a voice that I hadn't heard from her for quite some time. I could have diffused this, but I was curious what she would let escape in her anger. It was selfish, but hey, I was risking my life for her every day, I was allowed this. "Six weeks in the field experience doesn't make you the Rose How To manual!"

"Oh really? So then, you saw the way that she looked at Belikov? You believed her about Mason's ghost? Rose and I might not have gotten along that well most of the time, but at least I wasn't blind to her! I can at least say that I'm a better friend to her than my ex." Oh, low blow Sparky. Lissa was still pretty upset that Christian hadn't taken her back, and because of that, she was doing everything she could to make him hate her. Still, when he said anything related to her and him, she still felt a bit of a sting. "Face it, Lissa. You were so wrapped up in yourself, you shut everyone you supposedly cared for out of your sight if it didn't benefit you. I mean, why do you think we aren't together anymore? I can't believe the person that you've become since we met. You're disgusting." With that, Christian pushed himself off of the table and snatched his jacket off of the back of his chair before storming out of the room and slamming the door, which I could now see was guarded by my mother and father.

Lissa stood in shock for a minute, almost all of the traces of her anger gone. Then, of course, Adrian had to jump in. "Don't worry about him. He's still in love with you and he hates it. That's the only reason he's being so mean. You alright Lissa?"

"Adrian, I really would like to be alone right now." Lissa said, and I could feel the darkness strengthen. She was trying to compel him. Her friend. A fellow Spirit user. And why? Because Christian pointed out - if rudely - something that was completely true? She was in a dark place, and I could feel her craving the razor blade. _You had better not walk out of that room, Adrian, or I will kill you the next time I see you._ I thought darkly, then concentrated on removing the darkness from Lissa's aura.

Then, as quickly as I was pulled into Lissa's head, I was pulled out. Dimitri was watching me patiently, holding my hand with one hand and smoothing my hair with the other. I noticed the vice grip I had on his hand and loosened it a bit, glaring ahead. How did Lissa miss my love for Dimitri? Adrian saw it. Christian saw it without seeing my aura. Hell, I was pretty sure the school guardians even saw it. How did Lissa not? Dimitri seemed to notice I was back and turned me to look at him. "What did you see, Rose?"

"Lissa's fighting with Christian again, of course." I continued glaring, but my tone remained somewhat neutral.

"And you took some of Lissa's darkness?" Dimitri said it more like a statement than a question, but I nodded anyway. He was still a little skeptical about Lissa's connection to me, and the effects that it has, but he didn't question it as often now that he had witnessed firsthand what Spirit could do. That, and now that he was a shadow kissed former Strigoi, he didn't have much of a choice but to accept a lot of what I said. I nodded, not wanting to say anything I didn't mean because I was mad with Lissa's madness.

That was another thing that made me angry about Lissa. Not only did I risk my physical health for her every time she stepped outside the wards, and sometimes within them, but I risked my mental health for her every time she used her magic. And it didn't seem like she ever appreciated it. If it wasn't for me, Lissa'd be just like Adrian! Or she might have killed herself already! I mean, good lord! I did a lot for her! And she was mad because I left with Dimirti? Dimitri, who I'd been in love with for almost a year. Dimitri, who I hadn't seen in five months. Dimitri who I had to stake three months ago when he was trying to turn me. Dimitri, who I'd just gotten back into my life by some miracle. She was mad because I left for - as of this moment - three days with the man that I love and just got back. I felt my fists ball up and anger boiled in my stomach, giving me the feeling of hornets buzzing around in it. Dimitri's cool touch - at least in comparison to my hot angry face - pulled me out of this spiral I was in.

"Let's check in so we can go to the theater." Dimitri said, smiling reassuringly at me and took my fist, unraveling and placing his in it. Immediately I started to feel better and I nodded and got out of the car, taking his hand again when we met up at the front of it. We checked in, and I'm pretty sure the clerk was scared for his life with the way that I was glaring at him. Not that I really cared too much. At this point we'd put enough distance between us and the courts that there wasn't any way that Lissa would be able to compel this human into identifying me. At least, that was what I hoped for.

We unloaded our bags from the car into the small hotel room, allowing ourselves a few moments of peace before gathering up a bit of spare cash and walking back out to the car with our room key and car keys. He held my hand the entire drive to the movie theater the desk clerk had given us directions to, occasionally glancing my direction and smiling slightly.

When we arrived at the theater, Dimitri told me to stay in the car and, out of curiosity, I complied. The old-fashioned gentleman that I happened to be in love with walked coolly and quickly around the front of the car and opened the door for me, offering his hand to me to help me out of the car. I laughed, but took it without the smart-assed comments that had formed in my head, allowing us this little "date night" moment. Instead of just holding my hand like he usually did, Dimitri wrapped an arm around my shoulder and escorted me to the theater's grand entrance, quickly deciding on an action movie and purchasing the tickets without ever letting me go.

"Are you hungry, Roza?" Dimitri asked, his accent a little thicker than it usually was. He only sounded so Russian when he was very comfortable or very stressed. I hoped the former was the case tonight. But now that he mentioned food…

"Do you really have to ask that?" I replied with a laugh, wrapping my arm around his waist and squeezing. I steered the two of us over to the concessions stand where we got some popcorn and a soda to split, then made our way to the movie. While the previews were playing, Dimitri leaned down to my ear and whispered that he loved me and how beautiful he thought I was. It made me blush and I leaned into him, uncomfortable with the sudden outward display of affection, but I really loved it. After exchanging a few sweet words, I slowly leaned over and kissed his lips softly. I felt him tense for just an instant, but as I pulled away, he put a hand behind my head and kissed me in return. It was a sweet kiss, not full of lust or passion or anything, just the affection we felt for each other.

And then the movie started and consumed my attention with its violent reds splattering across concrete walls and creating strange, orb-like patterns that I couldn't help but think were so completely unrealistic. I laughed when Dimitri leaned over and whispered the same sentiment in my ear, though I did my best to be quiet about it. The two and a half hours passed quickly and before I knew it the lights were coming up and the show was over.

"What did you think?" Dimitri asked me, though he sounded like he knew the answer to that. I just laughed in response and took his hand, standing and guiding the two of us out of the theater.

"What about you?" I asked when we got to the car. He looked confused for a brief moment, so I decided to clarify. "About the movie."

"Very interesting. It never ceases to amaze me what Hollywood decides what is realistic." Dimitri said with a low, rumbling chuckle in his chest. He started the car and quickly drove us back to the Econolodge. We were both quiet, but comfortably so, and I didn't feel like there was any elephants in the room – as my father had once said about the court members back in Baia.

We quietly made our way back up to our room, very aware of the fact the evening was late and the hallways were silent but for our quiet footsteps. I caught myself sweeping the hallway, looking for potential threats and for places said threats could hide. Dimitri's chuckle at my side drew my attention and I saw him staring down at me, his eyes looked proud though.

"You are a wonderful guardian, Roza. But we are safe, correct? Don't you have some kind of sense when…" Dimitri trailed off, pulling the key out of his pocket and opening the door with a sudden sullenness around him. I knew that by mentioning Strigoi, Dimitri was probably flashing back to his time as one.

"You aren't them." I said after a few moments of settling into our room. "Strigoi. You're nothing like them. You did what you had to do to survive. That's it. You're a Dhampir. Always have been, always will be. It was just a small paragraph in the story that is your life. Don't let it consume you." The words that came out of my mouth tasted strange. I wasn't supposed to be the zen master in this relationship, but here I was doling out advice like I'd been doing it my whole life.

Jesus, perhaps we had more in common than I thought.

"Roza…" He had a ton of emotions swirling in his eyes, but I could see that he didn't really want to talk at the moment. I understood that, so I politely backed off and kissed him softly.

"You don't have to talk to me about it right now, Dimitri, but you should know that you didn't do anything wrong. I've forgiven you since I staked you." I laughed a little, then pulled him to the bed, removing his duster, then his shirt. He paused, holding my hands, and I saw that he wasn't feeling like anything tonight. "Let's just get some sleep." I said with a smile, taking off my shirt and changing into my sweatpants. Dimitri crawled into bed in his boxers and wrapped both of his arms around me, holding me close to him. We fell asleep like that, content with the warmth of the other's skin pressed against our own.

**So… I've been gone for like…a year. And I apologize for that. I had a really hectic year, honestly, and just didn't have the time to write. And then there was a period there that my laptop wasn't working and I hadn't backed up the story files other than storing them on this site. But it all is fixed, I'm working a consistent schedule, and I should have plenty of time to write. HOWEVER, I can't tell you when I'll be updating regularly. Some chapters are harder to write than others. I'm shooting for once every other week, but we'll see.**

**Broken Wing of a Broken Spirit**


End file.
